At least 600 chickens have died at a poultry farm in Sankha of Musikot Municipality-7, Rukum West. The chickens died within a span of 24 hours.

Firm owner Shobakhar Pandey said that all the chickens died from Friday to Saturday. Pandey said that he suffered a loss of around Rs 700,000 after the chickens died.

The chickens might have died due to bird flu.

District Livestock Service Office (DLSO), however, said that the chickens might have died due to Ranikhet disease.

Last week, traders from Kailali had reached the firm to buy chickens and weighed the chickens with their own weighing scale. The officials of DLSO suspected the disease might have transferred from the same measuring instrument.