Backyard poultry farming in India: A tool for nutritional security and women empowerment

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present review is an attempt to appraise the status of backyard poultry farming in India and its impact on socioeconomic and nutritional status of rural people, scientific skill development, women’s empowerment and need of improved chicken varieties for backyard poultry farming. Backyard poultry farming is mostly popular in rural and resource-poor areas of India and provides rural families with income, nutritionally rich food sources (meat and eggs), boosts up women and unemployed youth, and reduces the gap between demand and supply of poultry eggs and meat. There is hardly any requirement of infrastructure setup for backyard poultry farming and it can be easily handled by women, aged family members and children. Poultry eggs and meat are the best and cheapest sources of protein, which are easily available to meet the requirement of protein for rural Indian people. Major constraints of backyard poultry farming in India are high mortality rate in young chicks due to a combination of diseases, lack of infrastructure, low production performance of desi birds, lack of scientific knowledge, predation, malnutrition, climatic exposure and feed price fluctuations throughout year. In order to overcome these constraints, there is a need of introducing improved varieties of poultry suitable for backyard farming, scientific skill development of farmers on feeding, housing and disease prevention as well as management.