Name: Mrs. Meenakshi
Village : Indiranagar Village, South Andaman
Phone: 9474209785
Family size: 5 nos
Name: Mrs. Meenakshi
Village : Indiranagar Village, South Andaman
Phone: 9474209785
Family size: 5 nos
Smti.Meenakshi, 37 years old,is a hardworking women from Indiranagar villagehaving small agriculture land of approximately half acre. Her husband was a driver and due to some health issue he stopped driving. To support the family, she started backyard poultry farming in 2014 along with other agricultural activities. She was rearing vanaraja with unit size of 20-30 nos and was having desi birds of 50-60 nos. Due to high mortality (60-80%), she suffered economic loss. She had no knowledge on marketing of eggs and birds and also on treatment of affected birds. She decided to close the poultry rearing.
She approached ICAR-CIARI, Port Blair and underwent one month training on scientific poultry farming, goat farming as well as operation and maintenance of Mini incubator. After the training programme, she developed lot of confidence and restarted poultry farming under the technical guidance and support of ICAR-CIARI. She is using herbal medicines, doing regular vaccines for Ranikhet disease (RD) infectiousbursal disease (IBD), and bio-security measures as advised by CIARI. As demonstration unit, a mini incubator has been established under the DBT Biotech Hub project. She was taught to adopt community based hatching system to improve the rural poultry farming i.e., collecting hatchable eggs of desi birds from other farmers for hatching using mini incubator.
She implemented all the scientific interventions to uplift her poultry farming with desi birds. Mortality in the desi poultry was reduced to less than 10% due to regular vaccination against Ranikhet and Infectious bursal disease. She is practicing herbal decoctions to boost up the vaccine efficacy. During the lockdown period (April to July, 2020), she could sell 148 birds (Nicobari and Vanaraja) with a total net income of Rs. 64,000/- which secured the livelihood of her whole family. She adopted community based hatching system using mini incubator to improve her flock and monthly income. She is purchasing hatchable eggs of desi birds from other farmers @ Rs.18 andhatching for sale @Rs.70 per chick. She is maintaining 100 to 150 birds grow them till 5 months and sell @ Rs. 500 per kg body weight.Desieggs are sold @ Rs. 18 . She is providing hatching facility @ Rs.20 per egg to the farmers bringing desi eggs for hatching.
She is getting monthly net income of Rs. 10000 to 12000/- through hatching facility with mini incubator, sale of desi birds (15 to 20 per month) and sale of eggs. She is the sole earner after her husband become jobless due to acute illness. She is purchasing the ration for whole family and taking care of children education. With the income, she has recently started goat farming with construction of low cost goat shelter and withflock of 30 goats. Recently she purchased 9 piglets from ICAR-CIARI and started piggery also.
Willing to multiply goat, pig and poultry to increase the income.
Contributors : T.Sujatha,Jai Sunder, A K De and D.Bhattacharya