After Zero Budget farming, the government is planning to introduce a zero cost poultry for the production of no cost protein rich egg and meat. Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister, Giriraj Singh said that he is working on an idea of expanding animal husbandry and poultry where country fowl and cows or goats are bred in the area feeding on each other’s organic refuse and yield rich eggs and rich meat.
He added that “In 2010, when I was animal husbandry minister of Bihar state, I had done this experiment successfully in my own backyard where I reared around 300 goats and 200 hens, hens fed on the organic refuse of goats and their leftover feed. Surviving on goats feed and organic refuse, each hen would lay around 150 eggs a year and gained around two kg weight, perfect to be a boiler for meat. That's the way we were able to get a no-cost egg with chicken meat as bonus."
The minister said the government has commissioned two research institutes of Indian Council of Agricultural Research's which are at Bengaluru and Uttar Pradesh (Izzatnagar) to study and analyse this innovation model, which can bring a big change to more than Rs 1 lakh crore poultry industry.
Singh further added that “We will implement this model after getting certification from these two institutes. This model will help farmers to increase their income levels several times without incurring any extra cost" .
The animal husbandry and fisheries minister said that his department has started integrating animal husbandry with agriculture to double the income of farmers. He added that a pilot project has been started in a samll village of Gujarat named as Anand where biogas plant has been installed at 463 milk farmers, around 70% of them also own around one acre of land each. The average income of the village is somewhere around Rs 66 lakh per year by only selling milk. We can increase this income to Rs 1.63 crore by integrating milk production with agriculture. As gas is used as energy source, every biogas plant releases by-product (dung slurry),which we will buy at Rs 2 per kg and will sell them back at same price by adding some more nutrients and minerals. The manure (treated dung) increases the productivity of soil. Farmers will get minimum of 2 kg more produce than what they have been getting by using chemical fertilisers.
The minister ended by saying that the definitive result of this pilot project would come after October. If we get the desired result which we have thought, then we will implement this model in one village of each district of Gujarat and then across the country.
