Once the hassles over importing vaccines have been solved, another one lies ahead – injecting millions and millions of chickens against bird flu on a never-ending basis.
SAPA’s Izaak Breitenbach says the vaccines will be administered by injections under the skin. They will be applied to day-old chicks, and can also be used on chickens up to 20 weeks old.
The first phase of the vaccination programme will be to vaccinate all birds up to 20 weeks old.
“That’s about 40 million chickens,” Breitenbach says.
And it doesn’t stop. South Africa currently slaughters around 21.5 million chickens a week, on a 24-hour round-the-clock production schedule. Production statistics for June, the latest available, show that an average of 22.5 million day-old chicks were hatched every week in the broiler industry alone. That excludes production for the egg industry.
Vaccination is set to become an industry on its own, with lots of jobs for chicken vaccinators.
