THOUSANDS OF CHICKENS KILLED BY SCORCHING HEAT

MANZINI - The recent high temperatures which hit the country left a number of farmers in the broiler growing industry counting losses.

This is because towards the end of last week, the scorching sun baked to death tens of thousands of chickens belonging to the farmers.
Most of the affected farmers are in the Manzini Region at places including Malkerns, Nhlambeni and Luve among others.

Some of them supply the largest poultry industries in the country.
According to one of the affected farmers, the least affected farmer lost about 2 000 chickens, while another saw his reduced by about 8 000 and the latest incident took place last Sunday.

Since the farmers sell their chickens in kilogrammes at E15.22/kg on average, and a broiler usually weighs about 1.85kg, it means the least affected farmer lost over E56 000 while the most affected one suffered a loss of over E225 000.
Aaron Dlamini, a farmer from Nhlambeni, said he had stocked a total of 60 000 chicks and the heat killed about 8 000 chickens last Sunday.

Normal

This did not include the normal mortality, which most of the time would be around 4.5 per cent of the total stock. The farmers said they had special doctors who were hired by the companies and they came to assess the situation. “Their conclusion was that the birds did not die because of a virus, but it was due to excessive heat,” the farmers said.

Meanwhile, the Acting Director in the Ministry of Agriculture, Nhlanhla Shongwe, said they had not received the reports about the dead chickens.
However, he encouraged the affected farmers to contact their poultry officer.

He said this was because as a ministry, they needed to visit the site for inspection purposes because the farmers could think their birds were being killed by the sun yet it was a disease.

He emphasised that the ministry had to be sure about the cause of death.
“If the cause turns out to be some form of disease, we have to spring to action and also alert the nation,” the acting director said.
 Furthermore, he said even the chicken sheds needed to be inspected to determine if they allowed enough space as there could be other factors that led to the death of the birds.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time excessive heat kills chickens in the country as it happened some few years back and the most affected farmers were from the Manzini Region.

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