As the road leads to Panaiyankurichi from Ambasamudram main road, villagers guide newcomers to ‘software engineer country chicken farm.’ Though Jenil Karthik is working in the West African republic of Liberia and his father Paulraj is running the farm, villagers call it this way.
When software engineer Jenil Karthik of Agasthiyarpatti near Vickramasingapuram came across stories of technocrats running dairy or poultry farm, he started experimenting it at his workplace in Liberia. After learning the ropes by establishing a poultry farm, he planned to go for a bigger venture with the help of professors of Veterinary College and Research Institute at Ramaiyanpatti here. Though Mr. Karthik has scripted a success story, he faced many hardships in the early days.
“After learning about the nuances of country chicken rearing through friends on social media, I clarified my doubts with the help of faculty members of VC and RI,” he says. When he searched for mothers and roosters, he could not find a huge stock immediately. Now, after a lot of searches, his 4.62-acre farm now has about 310 mothers, 40 roosters and 2,500 chicks – from one-day old to matured ones that are ready for laying eggs. The chicks are kept in separate sheds with separate access to grazing area to prevent fights and deaths.
Since country chicken prefer to perch on tree branches at night, the sheds have been provided with casuarina poles tied across the shed and ladders so that the chicken can reach the poles to sleep at night. Safety nets around the sheds guard the birds from other animals and poisonous reptiles.
Mr. Karthik has designed an incubator for hatching eggs and sells the chicks aged one day to one month. “During winter, we get 80 to 110 eggs a day while it is 50 to 65 during summer. We use 350 to 600 eggs a week for hatching and the success rate is about 75%. But only 85% of the chicks survive,” he says.
While one-day-old chick is sold for ₹60, one-month old chick fetches ₹120 and 2-month-old chick ₹200. They are bought by poultry farmers. Six-month-old chicks, each weighing about 1.25 kg, are sold for meat and one kg of ‘live weight’ country chicken costs ₹350 and roosters ₹ 300.
The farm generates revenue of ₹2.92 lakh a month which may increase or decrease by 25%. After an expenditure of ₹1.53 lakh towards labour, fodder, electricity, medicines, transport and others, the net profit comes to ₹1.38 lakh.
“I’ve invested about ₹45 lakh for land and sheds. But I lost a lot while experimenting. It will take a few more years to break even” says Mr. Karthik.
S. Senthilkumar, Associate Professor, Department of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education, VC and RI, says farmers let down by monsoon should go in for secondary business like goat rearing, poultry farming, cattle rearing, piggery and quail rearing.