Research by Tamil Nadu scientists has helped country chicken to get a new commercial avatar
Posted on: 17/Dec/2018 9:52:52 AM
Most of us would be familiar with the term ‘country chicken’. This country chicken is delicious to taste plus the eggs got are healthy and it is because of these reasons the country chicken has been highly sought out by the meat eaters. For many years, research activities have been carried out by scientists belonging to Chennai based TANUVAS or Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University is known. It is now brought out that the country chicken would soon get a new commercial avatar due to these research activities.
Poultry farmers have been facing issues as they found chicken to be inferior to broilers. It is said that the broilers gets fat much faster and lays eggs far more frequently than the chicken. To bridge this gap, A.V. Omprakash and his team belonging to TANUVAS have done fabulously in breeding an alpha country chicken. The amazing point is this alpha country chicken could grow nearly 4 times faster than the average native chicken plus it could lay twice as many eggs in a year.
It is worthy to mention here that a regular broiler could generate meat weight of 1.5 kg in 6 weeks after hatching. This is high when compared to the country chicken that could produce just 200 to 300 gm of meat in that period of time. Mr. Omprakash spoke about how the country chicken that was native to the land was more delicious to taste and how it was more nutritious. He added that country chicken was more resistant to diseases and increasing temperatures. Mr. Omprakash later explained about how a native breed called as ‘Aseel’ was selected and was bred for 5 generations until chickens got hatched. The chickens generated 1.1 kg of meat in 6 weeks of time and 120 eggs in a year was laid. He then added that inspite of this huge enhancement they were not as efficient as broilers. He threw light on the cross breeding and spoke about how TANUVAS ‘Aseel’ was cross bred with Nandanam chicken 4. It is known that Nandanam chicken 4 is a commercially favoured breed developed when the university’s research station was located near the Nandanam signal.
A two day conference on ‘Native Chicken Production’ would take place on 19th and 20th of December 2018 and the above mentioned breed would be launched in this conference. The theme of the conference is ‘Conservation and productivity enhancement in view of global warming’.
Many farmers and academicians who work with the country chicken would be present at the conference. It is revealed that the scientists and grass root poultry farmers would discuss about the dangers or pitfalls in producing new chicken in large quantities. It is known that the demand for the native birds is increasing every day. As per Mr. Omprakash, the upcoming conference would be important to research and development as more broilers are dying due to increase in the temperatures. He then explained the advantages of country chickens and said they are more resistant to disease and heat and these factors make them better suited to be locally bred at commercial scales.
