Chicken and meat rates in Pakistan today

Chicken and meat rates

Live and dressed chicken are quoted as though they were the same price and they are not, which causes more confusion than any other figure in Pakistani food pricing. Dressed weight is roughly two-thirds of live weight, so a live rate converts to a considerably higher number per kilo of meat before anyone has taken a margin.

These are ranges we observe, not fixed prices: rates move with city, season and quality, and a farm-gate figure is never what you pay at a shop counter. Where we sell the item ourselves, the price shown is the one you are charged at checkout.

Desi against broiler: what the gap is made of

A broiler reaches slaughter weight in about six weeks on a formulated ration, in a shed, bred over decades for exactly that. It is one of the most efficient conversions of feed into protein that agriculture has ever produced, and the low price is the direct result of that efficiency rather than of anything being cut.

A desi bird takes several months, moves around, and burns a good deal of what it eats simply living. It carries less breast meat and more leg, the flesh is firmer and darker, and it holds up in a long-cooked salan in a way a broiler does not — a broiler breast falls apart because the muscle never did much work. Months instead of weeks, on more feed per kilo gained, is the whole of the price difference.

Which is better depends entirely on what you are cooking. For a quick karahi or anything fried, a broiler is the right bird and paying three times as much would be waste. For a slow salan, a yakhni, or roast, the desi bird is a different and better ingredient. We sell the second and would rather say the first out loud than pretend one bird wins every argument.

Today's chicken rate: what the daily figure actually is

The number quoted every morning as “today's chicken rate” is a wholesale live-bird rate announced by the provincial poultry associations and the district administration, not a shop price. It is set city by city, it changes daily, and by the time it reaches a counter it has picked up dressing, transport and the retailer's margin — which is why the rate in the newspaper and the rate on the shop board rarely match and neither party is lying.

Three separate figures circulate under the same name. The live rate is per kilo of live bird. The dressed rate is per kilo of cleaned carcass, and because dressing removes roughly a third of the weight, it is substantially higher for the same bird. The retail counter rate is the dressed rate plus the shop. When a rate looks implausible against another source, it is almost always because two of these three are being compared.

We publish observed ranges rather than a daily spot figure, and the date they were last checked sits at the top of this page. A working farm cannot honestly claim to know today's Lahore wholesale rate from Tando Allahyar, and a range with a date on it is more use than a precise number of unknown age. For the actual daily figure, the district rate list and the provincial poultry association notifications are the primary sources — everything else republishes them.

Rates by city, and why they differ

Chicken is priced locally in Pakistan to a degree that surprises people, because live birds do not travel well or far. A city's rate is set by the sheds within a few hours' drive of it and by the district rate list, so two cities three hundred kilometres apart can sit several tens of rupees a kilo apart for weeks at a time.

Lahore and the central Punjab usually set the tone: the densest concentration of broiler sheds in the country sits between Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad, the associations there publish daily, and rates elsewhere tend to follow with a lag. Karachi runs on its own supply from interior Sindh and typically sits a little apart, and being the largest single market it absorbs shortfalls differently. Rawalpindi and Islamabad are quoted together in practice but are administered separately, so their official rate lists can disagree. Peshawar and Quetta run above the national range more often than not, on transport distance alone.

The one figure that genuinely is national is the feed cost underneath all of them, which is why every city's rate moves in the same direction at roughly the same time even when the levels differ. If rates are rising in Lahore this week they are almost certainly rising in Sukkur too.

Mutton, beef and goat: a slower market entirely

Red meat in Pakistan barely resembles the poultry market. A goat takes a year or more to reach weight rather than six weeks, so there is no short supply cycle to swing the price around, and rates drift upward with the cost of feed and fodder rather than jumping week to week. What does move them is demand: Eid al-Adha lifts live-animal prices sharply for several weeks, and wedding season does something smaller and similar.

Mutton in Pakistani usage usually means goat, though lamb is sold under the same word and is generally a little cheaper. Beef is the cheapest red meat by a wide margin, and the with-bone and boneless rates are far enough apart that a quoted “beef price” is nearly useless without knowing which is meant. Undercut and other steak cuts carry most of the margin on a carcass, which is why they are priced closer to mutton than to the beef they came from.

We do not sell any of this. These rows are here so that someone researching meat prices gets the whole picture in one place rather than four, and they are reference figures rather than offers.

Why the broiler rate moves every week

Feed is roughly two-thirds of the cost of a broiler, and feed is soy and maize, both of which are traded internationally and priced partly in dollars. So the chicken rate in Lahore tracks the rupee and global grain markets more closely than most people expect a domestic food price to.

The rest is a supply cycle running on a six-week clock. When rates are good, more chicks are placed; six weeks later, more birds arrive at once and the rate falls; placements drop; six weeks later there is a shortfall and the rate climbs. Ramadan, Eid, wedding season and a hot spell that kills birds in the sheds all push that cycle around.

What we sell

Free-range desi chicken, whole, from our own flock — that is the row with our price on it. We do not sell mutton or beef, and those rows are reference figures so that someone researching meat prices gets a complete picture on one page. If you want mutton, buy it from a butcher you can see cutting it.