Some poultry farmers in Lagos State have called for increased funding of the sector to boost production capacity.
The farmers made the call in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
A poultry farmer at the Shasha area of the state, Mrs Queeneth Kingsley, said scaling up capacity was one of the major problems plaguing the sector.
Kingsley added that most poultry farmers did not have the readily available financing to increase their capacity.
“One challenge most poultry farmers face is the need to increase their production capacity, but the problem is lack of finance.
“Most times, I spend over N1million to stock up my pens with point-of-lay birds. This January I spent N1.9 million to stock up my pens but that kind of capital is not always available. I have an empty pen right now, there’s no bird.
“Right now, what we resort to as poultry farmers is to buy day-old-chicks and raise them to point-of-lay birds.
“However, the cost of day-old-chicks is on the increase on a daily basis and the cost of feeding them to maturity is also crippling the profits of the farmers.
“The major problem that hinders increase of production and capacity of local poultry farmers unavailability of finance to scale up,” Kingsley said.
According to her, with increased capital farmers can buy feeds in bulk to store, increase our land space and buy more birds.
“As of today, a day-old chick costs N3,315, I bought it for N2,950 on April 26, and three cartons with about 250 birds were sold for like N400,000 plus.
“If a poultry farmer can stock 1,000 birds, they are sure of getting 27 crates of eggs every day. And with the current price of eggs at the farm gate at N5,300, any farmer will break even,” she said.
On his part, Mr Shittu Asimi, the Poultry Association of Nigeria, Lagos State chapter, elder statesman, described the massive importation of poultry produce as the reason for reduced productivity in the sector.
“The massive importation of poultry produce, especially frozen chicken, is the major factor hindering increased productivity of our local poultry sector.
“Now, the price of home-grown chicken per kg is dropping because farmers are begging for patronage, while on the other hand the price of day-old-chicks and feeds are on the increase.
“The taste for imported frozen chicken is grounding local production.
“We bought day-old-chicks at about N1,150 at the beginning of the year, now the same day-old-chicks sells between N1,900 and N 3,000 depending on its availability,” Asimi said.
According to him, most farmers are less likely to stock up on their farms because of the high cost of production and low patronage from Nigerians.
“Due to these factors, most farmers have scaled down their production in the sector.
“The best thing any government can do is, first and foremost, increase the number of our local hatcheries. Our people are not investing in agriculture. They are investing in other things.
“Asides addressing the issue of day-old-chicks, the government should also address price of feeds. The price of feeds are too high, too expensive.
“So, those two critical areas should be addressed and the cost of raw materials should be reduced to make the cost of operation easy for local farmers.
“And with that in place, more people will be ready to invest in agriculture,” he said. (NAN)
