Scores of poultry businesses in Jayapura are on the brink of bankruptcy due to low chicken prices, high animal feed prices and competition from other regions.

"We've been forced to leave our hatches empty since April due to the poor sale prices," said Julianti, owner of Bunga Tani poultry firm.

"We cannot make profits as the sale price is still set at Rp 23,000 (US$2.55) each," she said.

Chicken sales in the region are also suffering from frequent blackouts and increasing shipments from Surabaya in East Java, Julianti said.

The price of a 50-kilogram sack of animal feed reached Rp 250,000 in January, but increased to Rp 306,000 this month, she said.

"The problem is the animal feed price increase is not being matched by chicken prices," she said.

She said local businesses could not match the prices of chickens transported from other islands, which sell for between Rp 25,000 and Rp 28,000 each.

The situation has been worsened by frequent blackouts plaguing the city. "The blackouts have caused many of our DOCs (day-old chickens) to die," she said.

"In this time of rising production costs, the sale prices are stagnant, thereby forcing us to shut down," Yulianti said.

If the local administration does nothing to help her business, Yulianti said she would look to other business opportunities, including operating boarding houses.

Eni Sumarsih, a chicken trader at Yotefa market, said she sold a maximum of 50 chickens per day, where before she had sold six times as many.

"The distribution of the inter-island chickens is currently dominated by supermarkets... so we cannot compete with them," she said.

Jayapur-based egg farmers suffered the same fate, and now the majority of eggs sold in the region are supplied from other islands.

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