Hyderabad: Chicken prices jump amid Covid spike

Charminar: Increased consumption of chicken coupled with the need of protein rich diet amid the surging Covid cases has led to hike in chicken prices across the city. Besides intake of fruit and dry fruits for boosting immunity protein intake has also gone up. This cheap meat now pasts the common man's reach.

For the past few days, the price of chicken has been in the range of Rs 240 to Rs 280 per kg (skinless) and average chicken (live) price is Rs 160-180 per kg. The price of a live bird was Rs 135 per kg on March 28.

In contrast, the traders fear increasing prices would affect the consumption patterns and might reduce the demand. "The price of chicken is increasing daily for the last 4-5 days and reached Rs 170 (live) in the wholesale market, which has impacted the consumption patterns and is bringing down the demand" said Mohammed Sardar Ali, a wholesaler in Nampally murgi market.

"Poultry farmers said that the price would go up to Rs 270 by this week and the price of chicken is expected to rise further next month in the view of festivals and marriages," said Shaik Kareem, a chicken trader at Santosh Nagar.

Another factor for the price hike is increase in temperatures impacting production, thereby leading to supply-demand gap. Besides the increase of bird feed prices, the increasing deaths of birds due to heat is also affecting the supply.

Daily on an average around 5 tonnes of birds are supplied in the Nampally market, but now hardly 3 tonnes are supplied. "Each wholesaler in the market sells around 2 to 2.5 quantal of birds in a day, but now this has halved," said Mohammed Imran, another trader.