Bird flu leaves Chitwan farmers panicked

By Our Correspondent Chitwan, May 10: Farmers in Chitwan, known as the capital of poultry farming, are now in panic due to bird flu.

The disease, which has been spreading for some time, has destroyed hundreds of thousands of chickens and emptied hundreds of chicken coops. The bird flu that broke out in Rapti Municipality in East Chitwan in January has now spread across the district.

According to Dr. Prabhash Neupane, Information Officer of Veterinary Hospital and Veterinary Services Expert Centre, Bharatpur, around 300,000 chickens have been destroyed safely so far in coordination with the hospital.

More than six tonnes of grains and more than 200,000 eggs have been destroyed, he said.

According to him, around 100,000 layers of chickens of a single farm have been destroyed due to the outbreak of bird flu.

It is believed that the flu has spread rapidly in many areas due to the fact that some farmers send some chickens to the market for sale even after they started dying.

It is also suspected that the bird flu that entered Chitwan may have reached the capital Kathmandu due to negligence.

Even after its recent outbreak, bird flu has spread like wildfire inside the district due to the large farms managing bird-flu infected chickens themselves here. Although the farmers there have been using the vaccine against bird flu on their own, this time it has not been effective, said a farmer on condition of anonymity. 

Earlier, in the programme of National Poultry Day 2078 held in Chitwan, President of the Poultry Federation of Nepal Guna Chandra Bista had said that it was not a secret that Nepali poultry entrepreneurs are using vaccines against bird-flu.

During the programme, Bista had revealed that the smuggled vaccine was being brought because the government refused to give permission to the businessmen to bring the vaccine. 

It has been found that the big businessmen of Chitwan have been destroying chickens without informing the government.

Vice President of the Poultry Federation of Nepal Tikaram Pokhrel said that huge losses were incurred due to non-approval of vaccines in Nepal.

Pokhrel said that the business, which had become self-reliant, would collapse if the state does not pay attention to solving the problem soon.

It is estimated that the private sector has invested more than Rs. 150 billion in poultry farming.

About half of Nepal's poultry business is in Chitwan. Rajendra Lamichhane, chairman of the Poultry Entrepreneurs' Forum Chitwan, admitted that more chickens were destroyed due to bird flu than currently shown by the statistics.