eChapters

Organic Farming

The FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission defines organic farming as “a unique production management system which promotes and enhances agro- ecosystem health, including biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity, and this is accomplished by using on-farm agronomic, biological and mechanical methods in exclusion of all synthetic off-farm inputs”. It is a certification of a production system as opposed to the certification of a product. For a product to be certified organic, all operators in the product chain, including farmers, processors, manufacturers, exporters, importers, wholesalers and retailers must be certified organic. The establishment of organic animal/poultry husbandry requires a specific period called as “conversion period”. This period is the time taken between the start of the organic management on farm and certification of livestock farm and its product. Changing from conventional to organic management system for livestock enterprises requires a careful and gradual approach. It is learnt that global organic product has increased 20% annually over the past 10 years. Though Australia, European Union and USA are leading organic producers, a recent study indicated that developing countries including India are also adopting the system and marching ahead.

Selection of site for a poultry farm: The following points should be considered while selecting site or location for a poultry farm.

The farm should be located at an elevated area with proper facilities for drainage.

To protect the farm against strong wind, tall trees may be planted surrounding the farm complex.

The farm should be located not too far from city to bring in and take out materials.

The commercial farm should be located near to marketing centres.

The breeder farm should be located in an isolated area away from commercial farm to ensure biosecurity.

The farm should have an easy access to connecting roads.

The site should have provision of electricity.

The desirable soil type for a poultry farm is loamy or sandy loam.

There should be provision of abundant potable water at the site. The water should be tested for various impurities like total solids, microbiological contamination, high percentage of salts of Na, K and Chlorine, nitrite, nitrate etc. Total bacterial count and Coliform count should be 0/ml.

Poultry meat and eggs have high nutritive value. Egg is used as a standard for measuring the quality of other food proteins. It is a well balanced source of nutrients. Similarly poultry meat is easily digestible, high in protein and low in fat content. It contains all the essential amino acids. Though the poultry meat and egg production have tremendously increased in India during last few decades however due to lack of organized marketing channels poultry producers are not getting reasonable returns. Indian broiler and egg markets are in a disorganized state. In last few decades various efforts have been made so as to organize and co-ordinate marketing channel of poultry meat and eggs. Through these efforts producers are also benefited but only in some particular areas. Therefore, there is need to expand it further covering the country.

What is Marketing?

Marketing may be defined as exchange of a produce for an agreed sum of money. It is a commercial process involved in promoting, selling and distributing a product. In simple words marketing is finding out what customers want and supplying it at a profit. Marketing is a business in terms of customer needs and their satisfaction. As per P. Taylor, marketing is not simply providing products or services; it is essentially about providing changing benefits to the changing needs and demands of the customer.

Among various animal husbandry enterprises, poultry production has emerged as number one position and attained industrial status in many countries, including India.

This tremendous growth in poultry production is due to the following reasons:

There is no religious taboo towards poultry and poultry products.

Egg is the most nutritious, natural, unadulterated and easily digestible food with the highest biological value.

Eggs can be consumed by all age groups and economic classes, since it is the cheapest among all the nutritious natural foods on the earth.

Among various meats, poultry meat has the highest protein, lowest fat and cholesterol content.

Poultry is the best converter of feed into meat and eggs. A hen needs only 1.5 kg feed to produce 1 dozen eggs. Similarly a broiler needs less than 2 kg of feed to produce one kg broiler meat whereas other species need more than 3 kg of feed to produce 1kg of meat.

Poultry has the shortest generation interval among various livestocks.

Brooding and Rearing Practices Used for Chicken

What is Brooding?

Rearing of young ones immediately after hatching for at least 2-3 weeks, either by natural means or by artificial method is called brooding. Brooding is done by two ways i.e., Natural or Artificial ways.

Natural Brooding

In the natural method a desi fowl which acts both as incubator and brooder is used to raise only a small number of chicks. She sits on eggs (chicken) for 21 days to produce chicks from fertile eggs and broods thereafter.

Mixed farming exists in many forms depending on external and internal factors. External factors are weather patterns, market prices, technological developments, etc. Internal factors relate to local soil characteristics, composition of the family and farmers’ ingenuity. Farmers can decide to opt for mixed enterprises when they want to save resources by interchanging them on the farm - because these permit wider crop rotations and thus reduce dependence on chemicals, because they consider mixed systems closer to nature, or because they allow diversification for better risk management. There is wide variation in mixed systems. Even pastoralists practice a form of mixed farming since their livelihood depends on the management of different feed resources and animal species. Mixed farms are systems that consist of different parts, which together should act as a whole. They thus need to be studied in their entirety and not as separate parts in order to understand the system and the factors that drive farmers and influence their decisions. It may be the most important principle to achieve increased production in mixed systems, together with the awareness that crops and animals have multiple functions.

Poultry industry in India has registered a phenomenal growth during the last four decades making it one among the world leaders in poultry production. The development of organized poultry has in fact masked the contribution of backyard poultry or house-hold poultry of rural sector. Backyard poultry production in India is characterized by small flock size consisting of 5-10 predominantly non-descript birds maintained in extensive system under zero input conditions but fetch the owners much needed animal protein and supplementary income. Importance of backyard poultry is well recognized by Government of India and special programmes are formulated for its promotion.

Non-descript Chicken

Maintaining small flocks of local non-descript fowls under free range condition by landless poor, small and marginal farmers are a common sight in rural areas. These birds are very popular due to their adaptability to local agro climatic conditions and management practices with prominent brooding behaviour and mothering ability. But these birds are small in size, poor layers (40-50 eggs/ annum), with small clutch size and intense brooding behavior, thus making them not suitable for commercial exploitation.

Importance of Backyard Poultry Farming in India

Commercial chicken production in India has undergone a remarkable change in the last three decades. While India is among the top five chicken producing and top seven duck producing countries in the world, the gap between the demand and production is still alarming. Average per capita availability of eggs in big cities is 170 while it stands at 9 eggs per annum in the rural areas. Though the commercial poultry sector has made a stupendous progress over the years, the conventional free and backyard poultry farming remain neglected. Backyard poultry farming contributes around 11% to the national production while in certain states like U.P. around 60% of the poultry population is indigenous fowls reared under backyard system. The backyard sector contributed to 23 per cent of the total egg production in 2005-06.

Commercial chicken production is capital intensive and is generally concentrated in and around urban areas. There is a wide disparity in consumption of the poultry products between urban and rural population. Around 75% of country’s population living in the rural areas has limited access to the protein rich poultry products. Protein deficiency is quite common in the diets of rural people. Adoption of rural poultry farming may ameliorate the high incidence of protein hunger in growing children and pregnant women.

It has been seen that the commercial birds have poor immunity against common poultry diseases. As production is inversely proportional to the viability traits, the nutrients absorbed are mostly diverted for growth in commercial chicken. On the other hand, indigenous birds reared in rural areas are resistant to many diseases and pests. Unlike the local breeds maintained in villages, the commercial breeds require high level of input pertaining to feed and health care to maintain production and check mortality.

In modern poultry farming, successful management relies on accurate and complete daily record keeping. Some of the traits may influence the profit of farm, thereby affecting the economics of the farm than the other traits, and hence they are called economic traits. Economic traits can be defined as those traits which are economically important and improvement in these traits would increase the profit of the farm. These traits are generally assumed to be controlled by the genes at larger number of loci. Some of the economic traits in egg and meat type chickens are as follows:

A hen can produce eggs without mating by a cock. Such an egg is edible but infertile and will not hatch. If the hen is naturally or artificially inseminated with poultry semen, the spermatozoon unites with the ovum to form a fertile egg that will hatch after incubation. Unlike mammals, the embryo of birds grows independently within an enclosed hard structure called shell and thus, all nutrients required for embryonic development are contained in the egg. The yolk, albumen, shell membrane and shell protect the developing embryo apart from providing well balanced nutrients.

Male Reproductive System

Male reproductive system (Fig. 15) consists of testes, epididymis, vas deferens and papillae.

Cocks have two ovoid creamy white testes, of which the left one is slightly larger than the right. Testes are located in the fore end of the kidneys in the abdominal cavity. Closely attached to the testes is short epididymis that continues as vas deferens which ends in the cloaca. The copulatory apparatus consists of two papillae and a rudimentary copulatory organ, the phallus which is located on the median ventral portion of one of the transverse folds of cloaca. Accessory reproductive organs like seminal vesicles, prostrate and Cowper’s glands are absent in the cocks. The phallus is small and has associated lymph glands that produce a fluid which is added to the semen.

The spermatozoa pass through the epididymis and are stored in the distal end of the vas deferens. The sperm after mating is stored in the folds in the oviduct of the hen to effect fertility up to six days. The spermatozoa of the cock have a long cylindrical head with a pointed acrosome, a short mid-piece and a long tail. Cocks produce about 0.5 -1 ml of whitish semen per ejaculate with a sperm concentration of 2- 4 billion.

The word indigenous, originates from the Latin work, indigena, implies that the individual and its ancestors originated from a specified country or continent. Presently, certain synonymous words used for indigenous chicken are: ‘native’, ‘local’ or ‘village chicken’. The indigenous fowls are well adapted to the local climate, need less input and produce tasty egg and meat at the least possible cost through scavenging. The birds require no scientific feeding, health care, housing and management and thus make the indigenous birds suitable for backyard poultry farming. Indigenous birds are normally handled by women, can significantly contribute to farmers’ livelihoods through increased food security and cash income. These breeds are self-propagating; contribute to poultry diversity and cultural heritage. Because of their local origin they are less prone to disease or predator attacks, and their cultural and sporting values secure additional income. The prices of egg and meat of local birds are 100- 150 percent higher than that of commercial counterpart. Some of these fowls are described in brief, as below.

The modern breeds of chicken have known to be descended from the wild jungle fowl. India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Malaysia are the homeland to these jungle fowls. There are four known species of jungle fowl viz. Gallus gallus (Red jungle fowl), Gallus lafayetti (Ceylon jungle fowl), Gallus sonnerati (Grey jungle fowl) and Gallus varius (Java jungle fowl). The domestic breeds of chicken/fowl have originated from Gallus gallus.

The modern commercial poultry production in India is barely 50 years old, although backyard poultry keeping dates back to pre-historic period. In between 1955 to 1965, some Christian Missionaries had imported White Leghorn, Rhode Island Red and White Rock breeds, to upgrade the local chicken, having very high disease resistance power; but highly broody. Later, hybrid broiler (Arbor Acres) and layer (Babcock) strains were brought to India in early seventies, to start modern poultry industry. Among the two, the layer industry took wings early and registered a spectacular growth rate between 1970 and 1985. The broiler industry came to existence five years later and showed 25 -100% annual growth rate initially and 10-20% growth rate subsequently; between 1975 – 2005. The growth indicators of poultry development in India are presented

Introduction

The dairy sector is one of the most important food sectors, which introduced the physical, chemical, microbiological and sensorial criteria duringprocessing steps and in the final dairy products. Several agents/ingredients of non-dairy origin are commonly used to maintain the quality of milk and milk products during processing, transportation and storage. In general, such ingredients are known as food additives and it can be antioxidants, coloring agents, flavoring compounds, preservatives(naturals and synthetic),artificialsweeteners, vitamins, minerals, stabilizers, emulsifiers and curing agents. From the safety point of view, some toxic agents can come into contact of dairy products duringmilking, storage or processing; such as fungal toxins, heavy metals, antibiotics or radionuclide’s, etc., which need to be identified and processed accordingly. Although addition of food additives in food/dairy product is controlled under country specific food laws or Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), few dairyproducts such as butter and unflavored fermented milk products are highly restricted for food additives.

Introduction

Spectacular accomplishment in every sector has enabled India to be amongtop achieving nations. However, every section of the society is not benefited by these achievements and problem of malnutrition still remains unresolved. Malnutrition is a common problem faced by underdeveloped and developing countries suchas Philippines, Nepal, Sudan,Tanzaniaand Indiasincelongback. Malnutrition includes undernutrition(wasting,stunting,underweight),inadequate vitamins or minerals as well as overweight, obesity and resulting diet-related non communicable diseases(NCDs). As per the latest report of World Health Organization, 52 million children under 5 years of ageare wasted, 17 million are severely wasted and 155 million are stunted, while 41 million are overweight or obese (WHO, 2018). More than 50% women of marriage age are suffering from anemia. If women are malnourished at the time of pregnancyand delivery, the babybornface theproblems such asphysical retardation,sensitive tocommon infections, reduced cognitive abilities, reducedmental development, etc. As per the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, starting from the date of conceiving a child, the first 1000 days are a critical window from nutrition point ofview.Unfortunately, inseveral regions of developingcountries includingIndia, neither the mother nor the babyis provided with the right quantity and qualityof food during this window period. Therefore, it is important for the policymakers to identifymalnutrition at an earlystage for timelyplanningand implementation of various intervention strategies at the community, village, and district level. NitiAyog, Government of India (GoI) (previously known as Planning Commission), in an effort to eliminate malnutrition,regularlyplans several short and longtermnutritionalprogrammesand policies.In thischapter,we willdiscuss some of these policies launched since independence and their impact in combatingmalnutrition.

Introduction

There are manypeople all over the world who have a certain level of sensitivity or intolerance towards milk and milk products. The reactions to milk which involve the immune systemare termed as milkallergy, whereas, difficulty in the digestion of the milk and milk products is known as milk intolerance. Milk intolerance occurs due to malabsorption of milk sugar (lactose) in intestine, a condition in which lactose is not digested into its monomers (galactose and glucose) due to lower activity or insufficiency of lactase enzyme. Inability to digest lactose, which is a disaccharide present only in milk, is specifically known as lactose intolerance. However, hypersensitivity involves the adverse immune reaction(allergic reaction) inthe body causeddue to the ingestion of milk proteins. Milk and milk products are major source of basic as well as essential nutrients and cannot be skipped from the diet of the individual. It is a rich source of calcium,which is essential for the growth and reformationof bones. The decline in calcium may lead to thin, fragile bones that break easily, a condition called osteomalacia or osteoporosis in women. Thus, it is a matter of concern for both children andadults whoare allergic or intolerant towards milk and milk products and not getting enough calcium and other nutrients in diet. This chapter would provide more insight about milk intolerance and milk allergy/hypersensitivity and how to deal with it.

Introduction

Digestion may be defined as the hydrolytic process carried out by various enzymes for breaking down complex food components such as proteins, fats and carbohydrates into simpler molecules like amino acids, fatty acids and monosaccharides, respectively. Whereas, absorption may be defined as the movement ofthese simple soluble digested food componentsalongwithvitamins, minerals and water from gastrointestinal track into the circulatory system.

The process of digestion starts from oral cavity (mouth) and ends at large intestineincluding tongue, teeth, jaws,secretions from salivaryglands (parotids, sub maxillary or submandibular and sublingual glands), pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small intestine and digestive enzymes secreted from pancreas and liver.

Introduction

Nutritive value of any food indicates the calories content as well as quality attributes. Macronutrients such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins provide energy by4-9-4 rule. It meanstheyprovide 4,9 and 4 kcal/genergy, respectively, when oxidized completely. Though micronutrientssuch as vitaminsandminerals do not provide any calories, they are essential for the enzymatic activity and metabolic reactions.

ATP or energy is measured in terms of ‘calories’ or ‘joule’. One calorie is the amount of heat required by 1g of water to increase its temperature from 14.5 to 15.5°C under standard conditions. Nutritive value of any food can be measured on shelf usingcalorimeter, in which food is completelyoxidized under specified conditions and converted into CO₂ and water.

Introduction

Nutrition is the fundamental pillar of life and an essential foundation of human and national development. Rightfrom the earliest stage of human development, the fetal stage, at birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, nutrition forms the basis for survival, performance, mental and physical development & economic and social development.Nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy, fetal and early postnatal life can have a negative impact not only on the subsequent growth and development but can also lead to changes in metabolic regulation and homeostasis.