Chicken production in Eastern Visayas drops by 7.9% in the fourth quarter of 2020

By PSA-8
March 29, 2021

TACLOBAN CITY – The total volume of chicken production in Eastern Visayas declined by 7.9 percent during the fourth quarter of 2020. It went down to 15,360 Metric Tons (MT) in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 16,673 MT in the same quarter of 2019.

Eastern Visayas production accounted for 3.2 percent of the country’s total chicken production during the fourth quarter of 2020. It ranked ninth from the region with highest chicken production.

The chicken population in Eastern Visayas as of 01 January 2021 stood at 2,437,068 birds. This figure was higher by 14.7 percent compared with the 2,124,681 birds as of 01 January 2020.

All provinces contributed to the increase in chicken population except for Eastern Samar which posted a decline of 8.9 percent.

Among provinces, Leyte recorded the highest chicken population at 838,911 birds as of 01 January 2021, which comprised more than one third (34.4 %) of the total chicken population in the region. Southern Leyte ranked second with 589,360 birds accounting for 24.2 percent of the region’s total chicken inventory. Eastern Samar, meanwhile, registered the lowest inventory of chicken with 3.3 percent share or 79,505 birds.

Among the type of chicken, broiler chickens posted the highest growth of 68.6 percent, from the 251,348 birds as of 01 January 2020 to 423,778 birds as of 01 January 2021. This can be attributed to the triple increase (229.3%) in the broiler chicken population in Southern Leyte. Northern Samar and Biliran followed with 41.4 percent and 15.3 percent increases, respectively. Leyte posted the lowest increase at 0.8 percent. Samar registered 12,000 birds on 01 January 2021 from zero inventory due to scheduled downtime on 01 January 2020.

Layer chicken inventory stood at 615,422 birds on 01 January2021. This posted a significant growth of 26.0 percent from 488,322 birds on 01 January 2020. The biggest contributor to this increase is Samar which doubled its inventory (99.6%) from 94,429 birds on 01 January 2020 to 188,510 birds on 01 January 2021. This accounted 30.6 percent of the region’s total layer chicken population. Southern Leyte followed with 29.1 percent increase. Biliran and Northern Samar posted a lower increase at 7.8 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively. While Leyte (0.01%) and Eastern Samar had nil or no increase at all.

Meanwhile, native/improved chicken inventory recorded almost steady inventory (0.9%) from a total inventory of 1,385,011 birds as of 01 January 2020 to 1,397,868 birds as of 01 January 2021. The 13.3 percent increase in the inventory in Biliran was offset by the decreases in inventory of Eastern Samar (9.13) and Southern Leyte (6.23). Northern Samar (4.4%), Samar (2.9%) and Leyte (1.2%) managed to post slight increase in their inventories.

More than half or 57.4 percent of the total chicken population in the region were native/improved chickens. Layer chickens accounted for 25.3 percent, while the remaining 17.4 percent were broiler chickens (Table 1).