THANJAVUR: This date last year, M Venkatesh, a mechanical engineer in Yenathi woke up to a disaster —his poultry farm that housed 12,000 chicken was consumed by Gaja.
Demonic winds devoured his MM Poultry Farm (owned by his father Manickam), blew off thatched roofs and brought down several trees. The loss was huge, but the family has limped back to normalcy. With compensation provided by the government, they rebuilt one of the three sheds in the farm six months ago and resumed rearing chicken.
“We did not know what to do. We thought our livelihood was finished. It took a few months to clear the debris. My family members themselves cleared them as we could not afford to engage labourers then,” recollected Venkatesh.
The family buried tractor loads of dead chicken as per the advice of veterinarians. TNIE visited the poultry and had reported their loss. Subsequently, officials from the Animal Husbandry and Revenue departments inspected the damage.
Based on that, the family received compensation from the government which helped them to tide over the loss a bit. Venkatesh’s mother Yelambal said “With the money, we managed to rebuild one shed.
So far we have dispatched two batches of chicken. The whole family worked day and night to get back to our feet again.”
The family has dispatched 10,000 chicken in two consignments- the first one in June 2019 and the second recently.
With money earned by rearing chickens in one shed, Venkatesh is rebuilding the second shed. “Now I am rebuilding the second shed somewhat stronger than the previous ones. I am using bulk pillars hoping they would withstand calamities, if any, in the future.”