The Sunday News
Nhlalwenhle Ngwenya, Business Correspondent
THE local poultry industry is slowly recovering from the impact of avian chicken flu outbreak which affected major chicken breeders, leading to a shortage of table eggs and day-old chicks.
One of the chicken breeders, Irvines lost 250 000 chickens which were culled in a bid to stop the spread of the highly contagious bird flu virus. These were 180 000 broiler parent stock and 83 000 layers.
However, after the outbreak, the poultry industry seems to be slowly recovering ahead of the festive season where there is demand for poultry products.
Zimbabwe Poultry Association administrator Mr Chrispen Sukume said they were already notable improvements in availability of day-old chicks.
“Since the outbreak of avian flu, we had to cull breeder bird and layer birds as well, that greatly affected our capacity. However, we are already seeing an improvement of hatching eggs of day-old chicks in the market, which were in short supply,” said Sukume.
Before the Avian flu outbreak, Zimbabwe chicken breeders used to heavily rely on South Africa, but they had to stop because the neighbouring country was also facing the same outbreak.
South Africa was hit by 24 outbreaks of the H5N8 strain of bird flu since June, including 10 at commercial chicken farms and three at ostrich farms, ruling out chick imports from that country, as a result Zimbabwe has resorted to importing hatching eggs from Europe, to avert serious shortages of table eggs and day-old chicks.
To try and avoid the outbreak in the near future, Mr Sukume said they were closely working with the Department of Veterinary Services on surveillance.
“We are working with the Department of Veterinary Services on a strategy to improve bio security and contain the severance of the disease. As ZTA we also want to ensure that we have our own local productions to boost and assist local poultry industry whenever we have a shortage of breeders and layers,” he said.
