ICAR sets up State’s first poultry seed unit

DEMAND FOR DAY-OLD CHICKS COULD NOW BE MET LOCALLY
GANGTOK: A poultry seed-unit has been established at the Indian Council Agricultural Research, Sikkim centre. The institute has started a poultry hatchery unit along with maintenance of parent stock for backyard poultry in collaboration with Project Directorate on Poultry, Hyderabad, an ICAR press release informs.
The unit was inaugurated by Minister of Food Security and Agricultural Development, DN Takarpa, on Wednesday.
The Minister welcomed the ICAR initiative to meet the demand of day-old chicks in the state. The project will help meet the requirement of poultry farmers and open up new avenues for entrepreneurship development, he said.
An ICAR release highlights that there is a “great disparity” in egg consumption among urban and rural areas due to non-availability of eggs and chicken which are produced mainly in urban areas. The rural areas are rich in natural food base that can be brought back into human food chain by converting them into nutritionally balanced egg and chicken meat by adopting backyard poultry farming, the release adds.

The ICAR Joint Director, Dr. H. Rahman, informed the inaugural ceremony that the breeds - Vanaraja and Gramapriya - introduced through this project are improved breeds for backyard poultry.
The growth and egg production of these breeds are much better than the local breeds, he adds.
Rearing of improved chicken varieties, which survive and produce more number of eggs may increase the availability of egg in rural areas and thereby increase nutritional and economic status of the people in this region, he further pointed out.
While Dr. Saroj Toppo, Senior Scientist and Co-PI of the project, informs that Vanaraja and Gramapriya birds have better survivability, perform on low plane of nutrition, grow faster and produce more eggs than the desi hen. The two varieties produce brown-shelled eggs and starts laying in 22-23weeks.
The infrastructure developed at ICAR Sikkim centre has a hatching capacity of 5000 eggs per batch.
The Minister also visited the farm lab, goatery, dairy and piggery units of the institute today.
At the farm, he interacted with scientists of different disciplines and was briefed about the various activities underway at the ICAR experimental farm. He also visited the hi-tech poly houses, Mandarin nursery, germplasm collection and maintenance unit etc.