Chennai, May 2 (IANS): With the price of poultry feeds like soya extract and maize seed touching high rates, the broiler chicken farmers of western Tamil Nadu have cut down the production, affecting the supply of chicken to several districts of the state.

The price of one kg of soya extract has risen from Rs 40 a few days before to Rs 90, and that of the maize seed from Rs 1,800 for a 50 kg bag to Rs 2,600. This has created panic among the broiler chicken farmers of the area, and they have cut short the production of chicken in the western part of Tamil Nadu.

It need to be mentioned that Palladam in Tiruppur district of Tamil Nadu has around 5,000 chicken broiler farms with an annual turnover of Rs 4,000 crore.

M. Kumarasundaran, a chicken broiler farm owner told IANS: "Palladam area alone supplies around 10 lakh chicken to several districts of Tamil Nadu in a week. However, we have cut short the production of chicken now as the price of chicken feeds have touched the ceiling. With this rate, we cannot go ahead, and better cut short production rather than going ahead with losses."

Lakshmi Balaji chicken farm owner, Ramesh Pandyan told IANS: "The soya extract which is a main chicken feed comes from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and northern Karnataka. An average of 1,000 tonnes of soya extract is consumed every day at the chicken farms of Palladam. There is now a huge shortage of soya extract and therefore, the increase in prices and the price of maize has also increased. There is no way but to cut short the production by 25 per cent."

He said that a broiler unit producing 10,000 chickens per week will reduce the production by 25 per cent which means there will be a clean reduction of 2,500 chickens per week.

With the prices of chicken feed increasing and the production getting reduced by more than 25 per cent, the price of chicken in the markets of Tamil Nadu and Kerala is bound to increase in the days to come unless there is a regular and consistent supply of chicken feed at the previous rates.