4th quarter chicken production in Eastern Visayas surges by 20.0%

By PSA-8
March 7, 2019

TACLOBAN CITY – The chicken industry in Eastern Visayas posted 20.0% increase in production during the fourth quarter of 2018. Based on the preliminary data, the total chicken production in the region went up to 15,602 metric tons (MT) in the 4th quarter of 2018 from 13,006 MT in the same quarter of 2017.

Eastern Visayas accounted for 3.1% of the country’s total chicken production during the 4th quarter of 2018. It ranked eighth among the regions with low chicken production in the country.

Meanwhile, chicken inventory showed that chicken population in Eastern Visayas as of 1 January 2019 stood at 2,524,559 birds. This registered an increase of 2.5 percent from its 2,463,777 inventory on 1 January 2018.

Among provinces, Leyte recorded the highest chicken population at 894,477 birds which comprised more than one third or 35.4% of the total chicken population in the region. Samar ranked second with 693,208 birds accounting for 27.5% of the region’s total chicken inventory. Eastern Samar, meanwhile, registered the lowest inventory of chicken with 4.7% share or 117,668 birds.

For chicken population by type, layer chickens stood at 452,613 birds as of 1 January 2019. This posted the highest growth of 21.0% from the 373,914 inventory on 1 January 2018. All provinces registered increases in layer population, except Eastern Samar, which had the same inventory with that of 1 January 2018. Southern Leyte posted the highest increase at 62.0%, followed by Samar at 51.4%. The provinces of Biliran, Northern Samar and Leyte registered slower increases at 4.8%, 4.3% and 1.5%, respectively.

Broiler chickens increased by 2.4%, from 461,755 birds on 1 January 2018 to 472,666 birds as of 1 January 2019. Almost all provinces showed increases, except for Southern Leyte and Northern Samar, which recorded a decrease of 36.8% and 35.5%, respectively. Biliran posted the highest increase at 67.1%, from 1,795 birds on January 2018 to 3,000 birds as of 1 January 2019.

On the contrary, the number of native/improved chickens went down by 1.8% with a total inventory of 1,599,280 birds as of 1 January 2019 from 1,628,108 birds on 1 January 2018. All provinces contributed to the decline, except for Eastern Samar, which had a double digit increase of 14.7% in inventory.

More than half or 63.3% of the total chicken population in the region were native/improved chickens. Broiler chickens accounted for 18.7%, while the remaining 17.9% were layer chickens.