He moved countryside to count chickens

MYSORE: It may seem weird that a 25-year-old youth would quit an MSc course and the comfort of Bangalore city, for rural life. Now, Manohar is running a country chicken hatchery and has become a breeder of birds.Manohar had joined the MSc course in products and design in Bangalore, after a three-year course in tool and dye making.Fed up with the stressful life in Bangalore, he gave up the studies and proceeded to Maralagala, his native village.He toured villages in Mysore and Mandya districts along with his friend on motorbike to purchase country chicken eggs, paying `5 each.These eggs were kept in incubators for 21 days, and chickens were hatched.Manohar protected chicks, reared them for four months and sold them in open market.Initial days were tough. He along with a few labourers spent 24 hours for 21 days to see that a good number of eggs hatched. He suffered losses in the first six months.But he was not the one to give up. After six months, Manohar’s his fortunes changed. Today this entrepreneur is a role model for the youth who thought a decent livelihood can’t be earned in villages.Manohar has hatched 35,000 eggs and sold about 18,000 chicks in the past one year. To meet the increasing demand for country chicks, Manohar has managed to set up a few sheds at Yelwala and near Srirangapatna .Now, he has around 1,000 chicks and 9,000 eggs are in incubator waiting to hatch.Manohar has invested around `20 lakh for hatcheries, which were brought from Hyderabad, generator and sheds. “I was initially discouraged and denied loans, but the officers, impressed over my efforts and success rate, have sanctioned `6 lakh loan,” he recalls.He sells one-day old chick at `35 and live bird weighing one kilo for ` 160. He feeds chicks for about four months and sells once they attain 1.5 kg each which has been lucrative for him. “I earn more than my software engineer brother while living in a remote village,” he quips.He says, “there is a demand for chicks and country chicken from across the state as people have given up rearing chicken in villages”. To make the most of this demand, he plans to expand sheds to rear more country chicken, as it is expensive and difficult to be on the move to collect eggs in vans.