Sunday, December 30, 1973
3 -
CHICKEN BREEDING AN IMPORTANT INDUSTRY
Family-type chicken farms in the New Territories play an important
role in chicken farming in Hong Kong.
These farms, which number about 4,000, form the nucleus of the
industry which, in terms of value, is an essential form of livestock
husbandry in Hong Kong, yielding more than $148 million for the farmers
last year.
Chicken raising is carried out extensively in many parts of
the N.T. and the products supplied almost 53 per cent of the total domestic
consumption of live chickene in 1972.
The Agriculture and Fisheries Department gives every encouragement
and assistance to the farmers to help them develop their industry and improve
their products.
A spokesman said that the chief beneficiaries of the department's
services were the operators of the family-type farms, each of which produced
between 500 and 70,000 chickens a year, depending on their sizes.
He said poultry husbandry experts of the department recommended to
the farmers modern methods of the industry, such as incubation, poultry
nutrition, ration formulation and poultry housing so as to put their operation
on a more scientific basin.
A recent addition to this team is Miss Tam Yuen-yin who returned
to Hong Kong just a few months ago from Britain after studying poultry
husbandry for two years.
The department also helped the farmers to prevent and control major
fowl diseases such as Newcastle and fowl cholera. These diseases could be
responsible for high mortality rates, the spokesman pointed out.
/The
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