Thrust to augment egg production in state
Kolkata: In a significant stride in augmenting the production of eggs in the state, the West Bengal Livestock Development Corporation Ltd (WBLDC) has come up with a state of the art chicken layer farm at Rathtala in Kalyani.
The completely automated farm is presently producing 94,000 eggs on a daily basis with the total number of birds in it being one lakh."The chicken layer farm will be capable of producing around 2.70 lakh eggs on a daily basis from its total capacity of three lakh chickens. The rest of the birds will be gradually inducted in the farm in a phase wise manner, " said Gouri Shankar Konar, Managing Director of WBLDC. The eggs produced in the farm are being sold at Rs 4.50 a piece from Haringhata Meat outlets across the state lower than the existing market price of eggs at Rs 6 to Rs 6.50 a piece.
The feeding of the birds, the cleaning of their droppings as well as the collection of eggs after laying are done in a fully automated manner. The temperature and humidity inside the farm are also regulated automatically depending upon the climatic conditions.
Previously, the eggs which were sold at the Haringhata Meat outlets were purchased from the farmers as a result of which the price often varied, as per rates in the market.
Bengal has a requirement of 3 crore eggs for daily consumption out of which the state produces 2.5 crore. The balance eggs are imported from Andhra Pradesh and Punjab.
The Mamata Banerjee government has been taking strides in augmenting the production of eggs to make the state self reliant and gradually stop importing the same. The Incentive Policy of the Animal Resources Development (ARD) department that was launched in the end of 2017 to encourage poultry farmers have already raised the daily production by over 5 lakhs.
The department is also providing provide attractive incentive in the power bill of the poultry breeders.
"We are hopeful that within three years we will be able to make up this deficit by increasing the production," said a senior official of ARD department.
