Gombe Poultry Farmers Count Losses As Buyers Skip Eggs
Poultry farmers in Gombe State are groaning over losses at their respective farms due to the ongoing naira scarcity experienced nationwide.
According to them, they have been operating at a loss since the naira scarcity began, saying buyers are not uptaking the eggs they are producing.
Mufeedah whose Farms is located in Kwadon town, about 20km from the Gombe metropolis, has about 4,000 birds and produces over 100 crates of eggs daily.
A manager of the farm, Abdul Hamman, said they are now selling a crate of eggs at the rate of N1,500 as against N2,000 they were selling some weeks ago, before the naira notes scarcity.
He said, despite crashing the price of eggs, they are still buying animal feed at the same rate of N7,000 and above to feed the birds, thereby almost operating at a loss.
“In fact, we are not even talking about making profit; our main concern is to sell the eggs, irrespective of whether we make a profit or not. We are left with hundreds of crates of eggs on our farms that get spoilt daily because there are no buyers.
“And what compounds our situation is that we have to keep feeding the over 4,000 birds we have at the farm daily, irrespective of whether we sell the eggs or not,” Hamman added.
On his part, the manager of Tuti Farms Limited, Dauda Mamman Muri, said he was feeding about 1,000 birds in his farm on a daily basis, although he was not selling the 30 crates of eggs they were producing daily.
“My birds are producing 30 crates daily which we are selling at the rate of N2000 before this issue of naira scarcity. Now the price has crashed to about N1,500. And we have to keep feeding the birds despite not selling the eggs.
“Even when we were selling at N2000, the profit margin was very minimal. But now that we are selling at N1,500, we are operating at a loss. But the most disturbing issue is that we are not even selling the eggs,” he said.
Muri decried that at the rate things were going, if not changed quickly, it will send a lot of poultry owners out of business, thereby compounding job losses.
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