In Pakistan, commercial chicken farming started in 1960s. This sector is playing a vital role in reducing the gap between supply and demand about protein. According to health standards of World Health Organization (WHO), average daily need for animal origin protein is 27g per individual, while in Pakistan it is just 17g daily [5]. Before commercial poultry, desi chickens provided eggs and meat in Pakistan, and produced on average, 0.778kg of meat at age of four months [9] and laid 30 eggs in a period of one year [10]. Almost in mid 1960s Canadian shaver poultry breeding farms and Pakistani airline (PIA) established a commercial hatchery in Sindh province Karachi. Meanwhile, lever brothers of Pakistan established a commercial poultry feed mill in province Punjab at raheemyar khan [5]. Since 1971 to 1980, the poultry sector gained 177%, 271% and 297% total growth in total sum of birds, total chicken meat and total number of eggs, correspondingly [3]. The most significant reason for this progress was a vibrant local market, that enhanced poultry meat consumption more than 4% per year [8]. In spite of showing excellent potential and growth at the completion of years, per capita availability of chicken meat is still 5.1kg and 50 eggs per year in Pakistan, when matched to developed countries these figures are 40.98kg meat and 399 eggs [7]. Certain diseases disturbing poultry segment progress is hydro pericardium syndrome (HPS) occurred in 1990 and caused an enormous damage to broiler and breeder flocks. Similarly in 1991 gumboro appeared -and badly effected broiler, layer and paternal flocks. While the poultry industry was trying to fine -tune itself from the previous HPS and gumboro outbreaks, in 1995 another epidemic of avian influenza occurred in parent flocks at abbottabad and murree farms and resulted up to 80% mortality [1,2]. Due to improvement in chicks prices in 1998 breeding and hatchery companies financially benefited, but in 1999 the poultry sector again suffered because of the appearance of influenza-like ailments (PPA, 2013a). Despite the industry faced reasonable losses during this period, it kept on rising and showed a tremendous growth rate in form of number of birds that increased, overall broiler production and entire number of eggs laid with the growth standards as 98, 126 and 67% [3], respectively. Up to 2004 the poultry business enjoyed excellent growth through good profit margins though, the occurrence of avian influenza [6] in neighboring countries and its rumored spread in Pakistan delayed this growth. Anyway, in the past few years, poultry segment has shown admirable growth and has provided employment to about 1.49 million people [4]. Reports about meat shows that in 1971, marketing contribution of beef, mutton and poultry meat was 61%, 37%, and 2–2.5% respectively [3]. However, reported figures of 2010 about meat are reasonably different where marketing part of beef, mutton and poultry were 55%, 20% and 25%, respectively [3] After fulfilling local consumption requirements, Punjab province sells its surplus poultry food stuff (meat and eggs) to Balochistan and other provinces (Al-Masad, 2010). Because of economical poultry products Punjab poultry sector is able to compete poultry markets of other provinces. Therefore, to minimize dependency on others provinces and encourage economical poultry production, need of a study identifying factors leading to uneconomical poultry production in Balochistan was realized, to inform policy makers about current poultry situation and enable them for economical and profitable future planning regarding poultry production in Balochistan.
Poulty, Eggs, Meat
