SRINAGAR: With the faithful breaking their month long routine on Eid, all the homes in Srinagar are cooking the best recipes for next 24 hours. Poultry is a key raw material for some of these mouth-watering dishes in the wazwaan country.

Jammu region is producing 21.7crore table eggs and around 400 lakh kg of poultry meat annually. (KL Image Bilal Bahadur)

But do you know how huge is the poultry is as an economy? J&K’s yearly consumption of poultry in 2015-16 was of the order of 81532000 kgs, according to the data available with the state government. At the prevailing selling price, it would mean a yearly business of Rs 1019.15 crore.

Officials associated with the poultry suggest that J&K has mostly managed to take care of its poultry requirements in last few years. In 2015-16, according to officials, J&K managed 640.95 lakh kilograms locally and only 174.34 lakh kgs were imported. This means J&K is managing almost three-fourth of its poultry requirements locally. Though it is being termed as slightly exaggerated, the larger reality is that the day old chick that actually grows into the table bird is solely being imported from the hatcheries in Punjab and Haryana.

Regardless of the source of the poultry, J&K spends huge on daily basis on its poultry requirements. Given the fact that most of Jammu is vegetarian, by and large, poultry, mutton and beef are being consumed in Kashmir, by army or by the Muslim majority belts in Jammu.

J&K’s daily requirement of poultry is around 223375 kilograms which at prevailing rates means a daily business of Rs 27921875.

The poultry sector involves a huge population. Chicken farming is a capital intensive and labour intensive area and in the last few area hundreds of youth have decided against joining government and jumped into poultry farming instead. However, there are crippling infrastructure issues involved which are preventing the youth from actually helping the sector to get into a full fledged economy.

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