"First I check my own weight machine to confirm that the weighing scale is correct," he said adding that he allows the cold stores to weigh his chickens only if he finds that the discrepancy is slight. "I would quarrel if I find a big difference in weight," he added.Due to lack of a properly managed market for chickens in the capital, poultry farmers have been incurring losses in every transaction, he claimed.
"Most of the cold stores change the setting of their weighing scales. We incur a huge loss if there is a difference of 10 kg when weighing 60 kg of chickens," complained Shrestha.
He is not the only one who finds being cheated with weighing scales.
Arjun Shrestha, a poultry farmer in Khawa, had a scuffle with a cold store owner in Kathmandu when he found a discrepancy in the weight of his chickens. He had taken the chickens to the market through the dealer for the district.
"They even hide chickens in the toilet and under the bed," said a vehicle driver who has been transporting chickens to the market, adding that poultry farmers who are new to the business cannot figure out how the chickens are weighed.
Some poultry farmers have simply given up and turned to some other business. "We have to worry about the market for our boiler chickens as no one buys from us when we supply directly," a poultry farmer at Panchkhal complained. "Customers come to my house for goats instead, so I have now given up poultry farming."
Poultry farmers cannot sell directly to the market because of a pricing chain set up by the cold stores and the suppliers of feed. They depend on the suppliers and cannot raise their voice about their problems as it is mostly the feed industry and the dealers who invest in the poultry farms. "Poultry farmers will continue to suffer until they get direct access to the big cold stores," said Bishnu Timalsena, vice chairman of Nepal Poultry Farmers Association.
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