- Poultry farming is the raising of domestic birds, such as chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese, as a branch of animal husbandry, for meat, eggs and feathers.
- The growth in India’s egg output is known as the Silver Revolution.
- Output rose from 1,832 million eggs in 1950-51 to 149.11 billion in 2024-25, and poultry now gives about half of India’s meat.
- The sector has moved from unorganised backyard rearing to a commercial system with modern technology.
Nature and Scope
Meaning
- Layers are kept for eggs and broilers for meat. Birds are usually housed in sheds.
- It needs little capital and gives income and jobs to many rural people in a short time.
- It serves as subsidiary income for landless and marginal farmers.
- Factory farming supplies most world output. The Worldwatch Institute (2005) put industrial systems at 74% of poultry meat and 68% of eggs worldwide.
Scope and Strengths
- Ranks: India is the world’s second-largest egg producer (2024-25). Its total meat output ranks fourth. Older accounts placed it third in eggs and fifth in meat, and described it as an emerging second-largest poultry market.
- Fast growth: meat, and poultry above all, has been among India’s fastest-growing farm industries.
- Cheap protein: poultry meat is among the cheapest animal proteins and is within reach of most people.
- Diet: an older estimate gave eggs and meat 75% of non-vegetarian food consumption.
- Employment: the industry employs large numbers of rural people, directly and indirectly.
- Low cost: production costs are lower in India than in many other countries.
- Rising demand: growing urban demand and high food value drive the sector.
Constituents
- In this table, the layer “Vencob 300” is Venky’s BV-300, which lays about 295–305 eggs in 12 months. Vencobb is the same company’s broiler line. Giriraj, Vanaraja and Kadaknath are dual-purpose rural birds, so their figures vary widely with management.
Per Capita Consumption
- India’s figure in the meat column should read 3.8 kg. Availability of eggs in India has since risen to 106 per head a year (2024-25), against 57 in this table.
Production in India
- These are national totals, and “Boiler” should read broiler. The 6,700 crore eggs match the level of about 2011-12, and output in 2024-25 was 14,911 crore.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Chicken
- “Remedy for many diseases” overstates the case: chicken is a lean protein that helps against under-nutrition. “Possibility to lose an entire batch” refers to outbreaks such as bird flu.
- Nutrients comparison: the last column gives kilocalories per 100 g of meat, and the fat and protein columns give grams per 100 g.
Size and Distribution
Sector and Size
- This table is from the early 2010s. Output has more than doubled since, and the rural and urban egg figures describe consumption, despite the row label “Output per annum”.
- Units with 5,000 to 50,000 birds per weekly cycle were common then, and the industry’s contribution to national income was put at about ₹26,000 crore.
- About 70% of production, management and marketing is now in the organised sector.
Growth
| Item | Older figure | Latest figure |
|---|---|---|
| Eggs produced | 33 billion; 69.73 billion in 2012-13; 78.48 billion in 2014-15 | 142.77 billion (2023-24); 149.11 billion (2024-25) |
| Broilers and poultry meat | 530 million broilers a year; over 2 million tonnes of meat in 2011-12 | 5.18 million tonnes of meat (2024-25), about 49% of the 10.50 million tonnes of all meat |
| Annual growth | 8–10% in eggs; 12–15% in broilers | About 4.4% in eggs and 3.1% in poultry meat (2024-25) |
| Consumption per head | 57 eggs and 3.8 kg of chicken | 106 eggs (2024-25) |
| Poultry birds | 648.7 million (2007) | 851.81 million (2019) |
Distribution
- Egg States, 2024-25: Andhra Pradesh 18.37%, Tamil Nadu 15.63%, Telangana 12.98%, West Bengal 10.72% and Karnataka 6.67%, about 64% together.
- In 2012-13, Andhra Pradesh with Telangana gave 31.98%, followed by Tamil Nadu 17.11%, West Bengal 6.76%, Maharashtra 6.55% and Haryana 6.07%.
- Bird population, older rank: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam, Karnataka, Keralam (Kerala), Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.
- By another older count, Andhra Pradesh with Telangana had about 18.2% of the birds, ahead of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Karnataka.
- Urban focus: many large farms lie around cities, including Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Nagpur, Shimla, Bhubaneswar, Ajmer, Chandigarh and Bhopal.
- Namakkal in Tamil Nadu is known as India’s Egg City, with output reported at about six crore eggs a day.
Major Companies
- Layer and broiler firms: Venkateshwara Hatcheries (Venky’s), Pune; Suguna, Coimbatore; Pioneer Poultry Group, Coimbatore; Godrej Agrovet, Mumbai; and Skylark.
Vertical Integration and Trade
Vertically Integrated Poultry Farm
- Vertical integration places all stages of broiler production under one firm, from breeder farm through hatchery to processing plant.
- This lets producers combine bio-security, sanitation, housing and feeding practices, and so gives closer control of food safety.
- Breeder farm and hatchery: strict bio-security, vaccination and testing for bacteria such as Salmonella.
- Feed mill: feed is often heat-treated to stop bacteria passing from feed to birds.
- Grow-out house: bio-security, pest control and the “all in, all out” rule limit disease between birds, houses and flocks.
- Processing plant: birds go straight from the grow-out house to a plant with strict testing at each step.
- Records of tests, vaccination, bio-security and sanitation are kept through the whole chain.
- The chain then runs from a live broiler to a whole chicken (primary processing), to cut parts (secondary processing), and to branded packs, sausages, salami, burgers and nuggets (value addition).
Research and Development
- Work in the sector covers nutritional feed, disease management and overall bird health, along with water sanitation, temperature, ventilation, lighting and floor management.
- Central Poultry Performance Testing Centre, Gurugram: tests layer and broiler varieties.
Export Performance and Revenue
- 2009-10: exports were worth about ₹372 crore.
- 2014-15: 5,56,698.80 tonnes worth ₹651.21 crore, chiefly to Oman, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
- 2023-24: 12,75,234.90 tonnes worth US$184.58 million (about ₹1,530 crore), chiefly to Oman, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the UAE and Qatar. Value in 2024-25 was about US$185 million.
Issues and Policy
Issues and Challenges
- Water and power: both the quality and quantity of water, and electricity supply, are major concerns in rural areas.
- Cages: conventional cages are criticised as an unhygienic and unscientific way of keeping birds.
- Feed cost: corn and soybean are costly, and steady feed supply is critical to growth.
- Disease: outbreaks such as bird flu and Ranikhet (Newcastle) disease hit often.
- Cold chain: proper cold storage is lacking.
- Awareness: many farmers know too little about animal nutrition and health.
- Low consumption: intake remains below the National Institute of Nutrition norm, usually cited as 180 eggs and about 11 kg of poultry meat a year.
- Processing: food processing and value addition must improve in undeveloped rural areas.
Avian Influenza
- Steady feed and protection from avian influenza are critical for continued growth.
- India’s first confirmed H5N1 outbreak was at Navapur in Nandurbar district, Maharashtra, confirmed on 18 February 2006.
- The Government moved at once to control and contain it, with culling and curbs on the poultry trade around the affected farms. The last outbreak of that wave was on 18 April 2006, in Jalgaon district.
Central Poultry Development Organisations
- Four organisations, at Chandigarh (north), Bhubaneswar (east), Mumbai (west) and Bengaluru (south), carry out poultry policy, as a tool against nutritional hunger and for the income of resource-poor farmers, especially women.
- Revised mandate: poultry units were restructured towards better indigenous birds laying 180–200 eggs a year, with a much better Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR), the feed eaten per unit of weight gained.
- Germplasm: they supply hatching eggs and day-old chicks of Hitcari, Vanaraja, Shyama and CARI lines, and analyse feed samples.
- CARI is the Central Avian Research Institute at Izatnagar. Vanaraja came from the Directorate of Poultry Research at Hyderabad.
- Diversification: they also promote ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, Japanese quail and emu, and they plan to upgrade training units into International Tropical Avian Management Institutes through public-private partnership.
- Support: they hand-hold the centrally sponsored schemes that assist State poultry farms, and train staff from India and abroad.
Schemes
- Assistance to State Poultry Farms: a centrally sponsored scheme of the Tenth Plan. It gave one-time help to strengthen hatching, brooding and rearing, with feed mills, quality monitoring and in-house disease diagnosis.
- Dairy/Poultry Venture Capital Fund (2004-05): granted a subsidy on interest payments. NABARD was the nodal agency, working through nationalised commercial banks.
- In 2005-06, ₹2.17 crore was approved for 49 poultry units.
- Poultry Development scheme: State farms, rural backyard poultry and poultry estates.
- Poultry Venture Capital Fund: a central scheme on capital subsidy from 1 April 2011.
- National Livestock Mission: now promotes employment, entrepreneurship and higher productivity per animal across the sector, alongside the dairy and bovine programmes.
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