Kaduna Poultry Farms In Crisis, No Feed, Zero Sales

Poultry farmers in Kaduna on Friday, said they were facing hard times, crises of feeds shortage and “zero sales” as the COVID-19 lockdown continued in the state.

Some of the farmers who spoke to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said their birds and eggs had accumulated due to “no sales situation”.

Hassana Idris of Hassana Farms in Kaduna said:”We the poultry farmers within the city centre are badly affected due to the shortage and inaccessibility of feeds, while sales of chicken and eggs have significantly dropped because of the lockdown.

“I have about 1,800 layers on my farm  producing about 60 crates of eggs daily, the eggs had been accumulating but I could not sell them due to the lockdown.

“The eggs are already going bad because of the heat and we are small farmers with no capacity to acquire large and modern storage facilities to condition the eggs in low temperature.

“We are equally recording high mortality of the birds due to the heat.

“Almost all shops and dealers in eggs we supply to are under the lockdown and cannot receive any supply.

“After the closure of the egg shops, I started to sell my eggs by reaching peoples doorsteps through personal contact and I was able to dispose off a good number yesterday when the curfew was relaxed”, Idris said.

Alhaji Usman Ahmad, a farmer in  Zaria, Kaduna state, told NAN via telephone that he had faced shortage of feeds for his 8,000 birds.

“I am just feeding them with five bags of feed for 8,000 broilers at present while usually I used to feed them with 16 bags  daily before this critical situation.

“I have around 3,000 broilers which are only two weeks old and 5,000 others which are 28 days old.

“We appeal to the state government to avail poultry farmers of a window to supply feeds to our farms  and also create an environment for farmers to sell off accumulated broilers.”

A feed seller, Yakubu Saleh, the Manager of Avian Feeds, said  that sales were at their lowest as farmers were facing different crises on their farms.

“The no sales situation by our farmers equally affected us as feeds sellers. Farmer have drastically reduced procurement of feeds for chickens while some farmers have started to feed paddy to their chicks.

“The direct impact of the Coronavirus is that some smaller farmers are left only with the option of allowing their birds to die of hunger or dress the grown ones for local consumption.

“We also have a challenge in bringing raw materials required for manufacturing feeds. We are soon going to experience shortage of feeds.

“So we need a window amidst the lockdown to transport raw materials for feeds production and supply to farmers.

“Poultry is a very sensitive business as it gets affected even in normal situation, but this time, the entire world is facing a crisis due to the coronavirus, our business has been hit very badly by the lockdown.

“This situation would amount to great loss and would cripple a lot of farmers ability to be financially buoyant to start afresh after the coronavirus crisis,” Saleh said.

Emmanuel Sarki, another poultry farmer at Narayi High-Cost, Kaduna, said that he sold off 500 of his layers at the cost of N900 each within his neighborhood.

“To ease me the stress and cost of paying labourers for grinding maize concentrate daily to feed my birds, I had to sell 500 out of my 1000 layers as there is no place we can buy feeds because of the curfew.

“Our egg buyers are also not able to access us because of the restriction of movement.

“I have been struggling to sell the eggs being produced by the remaining birds within my area. Accumulating the eggs would amount to waste because of lack of storage facilities.

“If the lockdown continues, I will sell the remaining birds to avoid much losses because the maize in my store is almost exhausted,” Sarki said.

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