Amul Dairy taps fast-growing poultry , fish feed and pet food

The milk business is no longer about just cows and buffaloes. The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Limited (KDCMPUL), popularly known as Amul Dairy, has now started tapping the rapidly expanding poultry sector.

Amul Dairy which has one of the largest cattle feed manufacturing unit has now launched Amul poultry feed for farmers. And that’s not all. The milk union is set to roll out fish feed as well as a variety of pet foods. Amul Dairy has the capacity to manufacture 3,200 tonnes of cattle feed per day.

Interestingly, the poultry feed developed by Amul Dairy is 100% vegetarian, unlike the conventional poultry feed which is a mix of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian ingredients. According to dairy officials, vegetarian raw materials reduce the chances of poultry catching infections which often leads to higher mortality.

In the last 10 years, with 7.5% growth, poultry farming has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments in India which is now the third largest producer of eggs globally,” said Amul Dairy’s managing director Amit Vyas.

The poultry industry’s revenue has already crossed Rs 2.5 lakh crore mark. “There are immense employment opportunities available in this sector. But poultry disease is a major factor impacting the economics of farming. Hence, instead of animal origin ingredients that are used for manufacturing poultry feed, we are manufacturing poultry feed from vegetarian sources,” he said.

“Our target is to sell 5,000 metric tonnes of poultry feed in 2023-24,” said Vyas, adding that in the first month of production, it has already sold 40 tonnes of poultry feed in Maharashtra. “We have started manufacturing in Maharashtra. We will soon start making the feed variants in Gujarat, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab,” said Amul Dairy’s chairman Vipul Patel.

For higher growth rate, delicious and tender meat with lower feed conversion ratio (FCR), higher egg production and lower cost, poultry feed for broiler or layer categories of chicken are generally manufactured using soybean, maize, bajra, barley, maize gluten among other growth promoting additives. The vegetarian ingredients are mixed with bone and meat meal, fish meal, blood meal and many more by-products of slaughterhouses.

“However, if animal origin ingredients are used, birds are more susceptible to infections like E Coli, salmonella and concordial often turning fatal for them. Hence, we have manufactured poultry feed only from vegetarian sources. Our poultry feed has 20-23% protein, 3.5-4% fat along with a range of other nutrients,” said a dairy official.

“The ingredients that we have used, lowers FCR and higher growth rate in broiler and layer birds,” he said. “We will soon launch layer feed for different phases of egg production and poultry feed supplements for the benefit of poultry farmers,” said Vyas.