Peshawar
A group of four educated youths from Peshawar ventured into a novel idea of establishing country’s largest ‘Free Range’ organic poultry farm with the objective of reviving the dying trend of eating real desi (indigenous breed) chicken and eggs.
Established over an area of around 64 kanals in Larama village on the outskirts of Peshawar, the W. Organic Farm has around 18500 roosters and hens fully grown in open and natural environment by eating organic food including grains.
“At the time of launching of organic poultry farm in June 2019, we inducted around 24000 desi chicks which we bought from Punjab and now we have around 18500 chickens as around 2000 rooters were sold in market and some died,” said Dilawar Khalid, partner among four owners of the farm.
The idea also supports Prime Minister’s Imran Khan’s “Backyard Poultry initiative” would help in taking this concept towards commercial lines on larger scale, Dilwar opined.
Dilawar, an MBA degree holder with additional qualification of MS in Finance, said his other three partners were his cousins and all were also highly qualified.
“Our farm is Pakistan’s largest Free Range farm where around 20,0000 desi chicken are grown in natural environment and are fed with grains including wheat, maize, mustard, sun flower, animal dung and grass” Dilawar claims.
He said “there are much larger organic farms in the country but the chicken there are grown in controlled sheds While in their farm, the birds are also kept in totally natural environment”. “The chickens grown in our farm are totally free from hormones, antibiotics, steroids, chemical feed and animal derived feed”, Dialwar continued. To a question, he said, timely vaccination was made through veterinary to the chick for protecting them from seasonal diseases.
Dilawar said the trend of eating organic chicken and eggs has reached to the edge of extinction due to non-availability of these items in market and because of exorbitant price.
If someone wants to have desi white meat or egg, he cannot get real one in market or in case he gets that too at a very high price.
Presently he said after six months his flock of 18500 chickens was laying around 4500 eggs on daily basis which they sold in market at a price of Rs. 4500 per carton of 360 eggs, one each at a price of Rs. 12.5 per one. The price of eggs keep on fluctuating depending on demand in market, he continued.
The flock of our farm has not reached to its full potential of laying eggs which was estimated at 10,000 on daily basis.
He said they were also making arrangements for supply of eggs to home with some additional cost of delivery. Dilawar claimed that organic poultry has great potential for earning profit because people want to consume healthy and nutritious diet at economic price. The side effects on human health of feed being provided to poultry chicken was changing mood of people who wants to opt for organic food consumption.
About future plans, Dilawar said “We are planning to opt for establishing Hatchery of organic chickens through natural process”. “Demand of organic chicken on affordable price is much more in market and people will buy happily if they found it in market”, he observed.—APP
