Hundreds of chickens died on farms in Rupganj, Narayanganj, after the area went without electricity for eight hours, Dhaka Tribune reports. Farmers said almost every farm in the upazila lost birds.
A fault in the power system in Chattogram division caused under-frequency and a disturbance on the national grid, and supply to Rupganj went off after 10am on Tuesday (27 October). With no power for so long, oxygen ran short inside the sheds and the birds suffered breathing distress and sudden heatstroke. They began dying in the afternoon; power returned shortly before dusk, but by then hundreds had died.
Sajib Mollah of Karnagop took a loan from an NGO to set up a farm on eight decimals of land, and his whole family works on it. He had 2,500 broilers aged 22 days, due for sale soon. "There was no electricity in the whole area from 10am until just before evening. In that time more than a hundred birds ready for sale died," he said.
Farmer Raju Hossain also lost more than a hundred birds just as they were ready to sell and said it would now be hard to make a profit on this batch. Another farmer, Abu Sayem, sprayed water and even fanned the birds by hand after the power went, but could not save them all. Over the past two or three years, he said, the prices of feed, chicks, medicine and vaccines have risen several times over, and just as farmers were trying to recover, the blackout hit what many had left.
Alauddin, deputy general manager of Narayanganj Palli Bidyut Samity-2, said there was no fault on their own network; supply was off in Rupganj, as in many other areas, because of the national grid problem, and it returned when the grid recovered before evening. It was a national grid problem, he said, and there was little they could do.
Photo: broiler chickens, Icem4k / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Dhaka Tribune
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