A fowl from poverty-stricken and Naxal-affected Dantewada region in Chhattisgarh is slowly getting to be the favoured white meat on urban menus. The ironies are flavourful. The chicken has black meat and the state government is hoping women autodrivers will give it the required fillip to reach the economic scale to be self-sustaining.
We are encouraging villagers in Dantewada to grow Kadaknath chicken in large numbers in the backdrop of rising demands from restaurants in Hyderabad located 400 km away. Already, four restaurants in the city have Kadaknath in their menu cards.
Other than selling Kadaknath, other livelihoods have also emerged since the revival of Kadaknath. In Saad, there are more than 335 families in the poultry business. Ditu Devi, president of Gram Sangathan Samiti of Saad, says she earns around Rs 4,000-5,000 from guiding farmers on how to take care of poultry and vaccinating chicks, not just Kadaknath.
In 1983, the Madhya Pradesh government had set up a Kadaknath breeding farm in Jhabua to save Kadaknath but had failed. In 2009, the KVK conducted a study and established slow growth on natural feeding and more than 50 per cent mortality rate as the reasons for the crisis. The KVK then engaged 10 farmers and proved that mortality could be reduced with optimum feed and balanced diet along with proper vaccination. When two experts from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research saw the results, they were impressed. They sanctioned Rs 50 lakh for setting up a hatching facility in Jhabua.
Today there is a huge demand for Kada-knath chicks from Maharashtra, Hydera-bad, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and especially states from South India, says I S Tomar, programme coordinator, KVK, Jhabua.
Today, there are more than 300 poultry sheds in Jhabua, and farmers are trai-ned in rearing and setting up their own infrastructure. Under the National Agriculture In-novation Project, the KVK offers help in constructing low cost poultry sheds; training on advanced technologies of pou-ltry production; optimum feed and balanced diet; vaccination and exploring markets.