For the first time in several years there was a sharp reduction of poultry livestock in farms that have influenced on the overall reduction of livestock in the country. According to the Committee of Statistics as for the 1st of January 2012 the number of poultry has dropped up to199.5 million of heads or by 2.1% compared with the year ago period. Herewith this decline in agricultural enterprises was 4.7% and it decreased to 105.3 million of heads.

"The outage of "Kurgan broiler" (concern "Agromars", Kharkiv region) last summer as well as withdrawal from the market of regional producers in Odesa, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia and other regions where livestock reduction was 20 - 90% compared to January 1, 2011 caused a significant impact on the number of livestock. ", - says CEO of the Association" Ukrainian Agribusiness Club "(UCAB) Elizabeth Svyatkivska.

In her opinion the suspension of permits for export to Russia for two largest Ukrainian chicken producers - Myronivskyi Hliboproduct and Agromars, who are forced to increase domestic sales, which is difficult to be implemented in terms of low paying capacity of population, also makes the negative effect .

The detection of salmonellosis in one of the poultry farms, which will be also effected on the reduction of production (as in connection with a decrease in demand and because of the need to prevent the spread of disease) also effected some reduction in demand for chicken .

According to experts of UCAB  forecasts concerning decreases of grain yields due to bad weather also makes adjustments to the plans of enterprises which are occupied in the poultry growing, especially to those which don’t have their own forage. The expected rise in feed costs has influenced on the growth of poultry production, despite the fact that current market trends indicate that the price of poultry may soon begin to decrease.

According to E. Svyatkivska, starting from the second half of 2011, prices for poultry began to rise and remained stable at over 19 USD / kg for carcass (at wholesale) to almost mid-January 2012. Reduction of livestock (and consequently increase of sales) that occurred in December and January has resulted in price cut to 18,20-18,50 USD / kg. "If in the near future market situation does not change, further decline poultry prices will be po