Develop disease resilient local poultry breed for both meat and eggs- and train farmers on bio-security/safety measures to minimize their risk of poultry loss due to prevalent diseases

Poultry farming has historically played a major role as an income generating enterprise in Nepal and continues to be popular and growing rapidly. It has become one of the major sources of food security and protein for the growing Nepali population, both in urban and rural areas. Around 75 million broiler chickens are reared annually as a source of meat. The size of the poultry population has significantly increased in the recent years.

As part of our extensive study on poultry production in Nepal, BIOVAC Nepal Pvt. Ltd. conducted one of the largest nationwide poultry disease studies in Nepal. BIOVAC Nepal is vaccine research, development and manufacturing company based in Nepal which also focuses on animal health and disease diagnosis. The study revealed that Nepal’s poultry industry- both commercial and backyard, although growing is highly inefficient. Most of the poultry raised are imported commercial breeds that are vulnerable to many prevalent diseases including some of the well-known viral diseases like Newcastle and Influenza A. Poultry production is hampered greatly by high infectious disease related mortality, which can be over 15% of production potential. Our study has also shown that the local breed of chicken are much more resilient towards these viral and bacterial infections. Although their growth rate is less than the commercial breed, the overall price per kilogram of the local breed poultry meat is significantly higher (> 6 times) than the commercial breed.

Additionally, commercial feed production has relied on imported corn and soybean as major ingredients. Nepal has a high potential of producing enough of domestic corn and soybean and other crops that can be used in poultry feed production. From a long term sustainability perspective, and as a way to adapt to post COVID19 scenario, attaining self-reliance from locally produced raw materials for poultry production can be a sustainable model moving forward- this would include production of competitively priced soybean and corn which consists of over 60% of poultry feed production. With our objective #1, integrated sustainable farming with the focus on poultry feed ingredient production, will make our poultry production more self-reliant.

In general, poultry production practices can be improved greatly by having, for example, better bio-security and bio-safety procedures in place. Our study has found that most of the farmers are not aware of and hence not practicing a good bio-safety and security measures. Therefore, losing more than 20% of production to various infectious diseases.

BIOVAC Nepal has been playing a major role improving the animal health by introducing accurate diagnosis and prevention through vaccine research, development and manufacturing in Nepal. It has engaged with women lead business to provide greater training and access of capital to small rural farmers for poultry production. We, therefore, are setting up a poultry research and training project in partnership with institutions like BIOVAC Nepal Pvt. Ltd.