Chick slaying seen as way out of low prices

JAKARTA (JP): Several poultry breeders in East Java have agreed to slaughter up to 2.5 million day-old chicks in an effort to prop up prices which have continued to slump over the last few months.

Bambang Wiryono, the local animal husbandry office's head in Surabaya, East Java, said on Saturday that breeders felt they needed to kill the chicks because of an oversupply on East Java's market.

The decision to kill the chicks was made with the consent of the breeders and gained the Ministry of Agriculture's directorate general of animal husbandry's approval.

Based on this consent, the breeders agreed to cut back 20 percent of their chick production. The slaughtering would be carried out gradually every week for one month, with the first stage already begun on May 18.

Such an agreement has also been reached and applied in Bali, Lampung and North Sumatra. The agreement was approved by the government on May 15.

In East Java, 550,000 day-old chicks were slaughtered in the first week after the agreement was reached and 600,000 were killed in the second week. Another 650,000 were killed last week and the last batch, 700,000, will be slaughtered this week.

As a result, market prices of layer day-old chicks in several cities in East Java went up from Rp 450 (19.5 U.S. cents) to Rp 900 and broiler day-old chicks from Rp 400 to Rp 750.

Chicken meat prices also increased in the last couple of days from Rp 3,450 per kilogram to Rp 4,000 per kg, Antara reported.

Earlier last week, six major poultry breeders in North Sumatra also agreed to cut back their chick supply by 20 percent, or up to one million chicks in one month.

So far, the breeders have slaughtered 750,000 chicks.

The government said last week that it planned a crash program to bring down the prices of poultry feed, so breeders could, in turn, enjoy a better profit margin.

Last year, soaring feed prices caused many small-scale poultry breeders to face bankruptcy. Until early this year, prices were still hovering.

Meanwhile, the day-old chick market was flooded by chicks produced by large-scale breeders, causing oversupplies of up to 20 percent, or about 2.8 million chicks -- crushing small-scale breeders even more.

As a result, day-old chick prices went down to an average of between Rp 600 and Rp 900 per chick, while feed prices went up to Rp 860 to Rp 890 per kilogram. (pwn)