Poultry farmers in Ghana imported more than five million day old chicks last year to meet the shortfall in local production. Currently there are only six hatcheries in Ghana producing between 20 to 40 percent of installed capacity.
They produced a total of 804,000 day old chicks to be reared as broilers and 2,412,000 day old chicks to be reared as layers. Statistics from the Veterinary Services Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture show that 1,088,865 day old chicks were imported for rearing as broilers.
The number of day old chicks imported last year for rearing as layers was 4,481,602. Dr Stephen Ockling, Deputy Director of the Veterinary Services told an agribusiness forum in Accra that 435,509 eggs were imported during the period.
Dr Ockling said the current capacity of the hatcheries will thwart efforts to achieve the vision of the Livestock Development Policy. The policy is seeking to increase the supply of meat, eggs and dairy products from the current rate of 30 to 50 percent by 2016. But Dr. Ockling said there has not been a livestock survey to monitor the progress made for more than a decade.
“The challenges are many, ranging from irregular supply to the low quality of starter stock. There is also low quality but high priced feed, inadequate watering facilities and inefficient disease control measures. Our poultry farmers don’t also have access to credits and the liberalization of import trade is killing the local poultry industry, he explained”.
Dr Ockling said per capita consumption of poultry has increased from 4.8kg in 2000 to 6.6kg in 2012. This provides business opportunities for local and international investors to meet the demand for poultry products.
“We need a lot of interventions to address the constraints in starter stock production. We need to reduce the high cost of producing feed. Currently we have only 8 commercial feed mills operating at an installed capacity of 412 Metric tonnes per day. And this is woefully inadequate, he said.”
By Elvis Adjetey
