NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 27 – Animal feed companies are grappling with depressed sales as farmers embrace alternative feeding techniques amid high cost of feeds.
The Federation of Kenya Poultry Farmers (FKPF) says high cost of broiler and layer meals have impacted production.
While a 70kg bag of layers mash cost Sh1,875 in 2020, it now goes for Sh3,500-3,600 currently.
On the other hand, chick mash that was costing Sh2,300 now averages Sh3,800.
“It is unfortunate that most farmers have stopped buying feeds and resulted to alternative feeding techniques that don’t provide the essential nutrients to chickens,” the Kiambu Poultry Cooperative Societies Manager John Njeha said.
Prices of animal feeds have been rising since 2020, attributed to shortage of raw materials such as maize, soya and oil cakes, forcing manufacturers to increase prices.
According to the Association of Kenya Feed Manufacturers (AKEFEMA), soya and oil cake prices increased by more than 60 percent in 2021.
“The immediate impact of the rising feed prices has been losses by farmers amidst sticky output prices. As a result, farmers are cutting back production, and a consequence, animal feed manufacturers are also being adversely affected,” says AKAFEMA in a new report conducted by Tegemeo Institute.
The report further said that farmers are abandoning livestock, and poultry enterprises as well as small-scale feed manufacturers amid high costs, resulting in massive job losses.
FKPF through their President Monica Wanjiru urged the government to consider the animal feeds sub-sector long-term competitiveness.
“This needs to include importing semi processed products such as crushed maize, soy cake and adopting sorghum farming,” Wanjiru said.
In a preliminary result from feed trials being conducted in Kenya show that broiler performance improved when grain sorghum was part of the feed ration. USA Grain Council, Reece Cannady, Manager of Global Trade said that USGC is trying to expand sorghum global reach and sub-Saharan is one of the markets.
“Because sub-Saharan Africa is a rapidly growing region in terms of population and is experiencing a feed deficit, it is an ideal destination for U.S. sorghum. Specifically related to Kenya, USGC helped facilitate two feed trials there. One of those trials was for a sorghum-based feed in broiler diets and another in layers,” he said.
United Ag, based in Victoria, Texas, shipped 60 metric tons of grain sorghum to a leading feed miller in Kenya, with half of the tonnage being used in the layer trial and the other half in the broiler trial.
According to Cannady, because the millers weren’t familiar with working with sorghum, USGC instructed them on how to process it into a fine powder, and make it fully digestible so there would be no whole berries that would “go straight through the bird.”
Cannady said the broiler feed trial has been completed, while the layer feed trial is wrapping up. The results are “being put into a table and into a digestible format,” he said.
“In short, the results were very, very good,” Cannady said of the broiler feed trial. “I haven’t heard any specifics on the layer trial, but in the broiler trial, they had better results with sorghum than with their old feedstocks.”
Long term competitiveness of the animal feeds, and the livestock sectors will ultimately require competitive raw material sourcing and production.
