Foreign experts conduct poultry knowledge and technology transfer workshop and seminar

A two-day workshop and seminar was organised in Colombo on 15 and 16 March by Fortune Grand Parent Farms Lanka Ltd. for its staff and customers (consisting of large and middle scale parent broiler breeder farms and hatcheries).

Fortune Grand Parent Farms Lanka Ltd., which is a joint-venture between Bairaha Farms PLC and Farms Pride Ltd., to produce locally parent broiler breeder chicks at its state of the art farm and hatchery, utilising high quality grandparent broiler breeder chicks imported from Cobb Vantress Inc. 

The said supplier Cobb Vantress Inc., one of the two leading primary poultry breeding companies in the World, have their primary breeding operations in USA, United Kingdom, Netherlands, New Zealand among others. There were in total 11 representatives from this Cobb Vantress Inc., and seminar and workshop were conducted by seven of them

This workshop and seminar are useful to impart latest knowledge in a dynamic poultry industry, so that it would help poultry organisations and farmers to produce quality chicks, and in turn to produce broilers which grow fast. These fast-growing broilers derive their natural growth potential from their parent breeders, which drive their potential from their grand parent, which drive from their great grandparents, and they in turn derive from their great, great grandparents and so on.

These fast-growing broilers are utilised by thousands of poultry farmers in Sri Lanka, as it is the case in other countries, to produce chicken meat without the need for any use of hormone whatsoever. Sri Lankan poultry industry produces around 120 million broilers per annum and there is no technical or economic justification whatsoever to inject any hormone to grow broilers. Even if such hormones are to be used the Industry needs to obtain import permit from the Department of Animal Production and Health, and if such hormones were imported the Health Ministry would also be aware of any such imports.

As a result of Fortune Grand Parent Farms Lanka Ltd., engaging in the production of parent broiler breeder chicks, we are able to save nearly $ 5,000,000 per annum in import substitution. Further we also export part of our quality parent breeder chicks to other Asian countries.

Thousands of local maize (corn) farmers and their families almost exclusively depend on the poultry industry for their livelihood.