Agro firm works to lower cost of chicken feed

WE have made strides to find alternative feed ingredients in order to lower the cost of feed production, says Gold Acre Farm chief executive officer Jessie Ndhlovu.

Ms Ndhlovu said Gold Acre Farm was a small holding involved in agribusiness with specific focus on village chicken production for eggs, meat and rearing as well as offering incubation services. She said the firm was conducting a research into alternative feed ingredients which was aimed at lowering the cost of production for feed. Ms Ndhlovu said the company was conducting research that would help lower the cost of production. He was speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation in Lusaka. “We hope to eventually produce our own feed from some materials which are within our environment first for our own use,” she said. Ms Ndhlovu said the project would be rolled out on the market to assist other small scale farmers with feed that would be competitive and at the same time lower their cost of production. “When we see how effective this will be then we will roll it out onto the market to assist other small scale farmers in the country,” she said. She said the company was providing employment to the locals within the area of their operations. “We also work with local marketers who are the major buyers of our produce who then re-sell to the public,” Ms Ndhlovu said. Ms Ndhlovu said the company was providing training on how to produce and manage village chickens through knowledge transfer and was contributing to the national treasury through taxes. “We embarked on this research due to the increase in costs of production specifically the cost of input materials in the feed that we provide for the chickens,” she said.

The project would be rolled out on the market to assist other small scale farmers with feed that would be competitive and at the same time lower their cost of production.