Brazilian poultry farmer raises giant roosters worth R$20,000 – 09/14/2023 – Market

When poultry farmer Rubens Braz started raising chickens as a hobby, he had no idea how big the operation — or the birds — would grow.

Some 20 years later, he now raises giant roosters in central Brazil, a small-scale business that is gaining traction with increased sales across the country.

Called “Giant Indians”, roosters can measure more than 1.20 meters in height.

The gigantic birds, which are awaiting formal recognition as a new breed, could be worth R$20,000 each, said Braz, given the interest of hundreds of breeders in the country.

“At first, it was a hobby,” he said in an interview at one of his farms in the state of Goiás. “Then other breeders became interested and today we have a commercial operation.”

His company, called Avicultura Gigante, is still a niche company in Brazil, the largest exporter of chicken meat in the world and home to major meatpackers, including BRF and JBS.

As the global bird flu crisis has hurt business this year, limiting the transport of live animals as Brazil seeks to prevent the disease from appearing on commercial farms, Braz said he has focused on supplying produced eggs to nearby farmers. Its own farms house around 300 birds.

While this is not enough to satisfy the meat sector, he said there is a lot of demand from collectors and farmers looking to bolster their flocks of free-range chickens, or cage-free animals raised on small farms primarily for subsistence purposes.

According to information on the company’s website, the Giant Indian is the result of crossing free-range birds with fighting breeds.

“They are rustic, good producers of meat and eggs”, he says, highlighting that the species is also recommended for crossing with other breeds to improve a breeding stock.