RUTENDO RORI
Zimbabwe’s overall day-old chicks production dropped 2.5% to 71.4m birds in 2020 from 73.4m in the previous year, owing to ever rising input costs and the Covid-19 pandemic that have ravaged the poultry industry, a livestock assessment report shows.
There was a 14% drop for local layer day old chick production in the period under review to 2,637,000 birds in 2020 from 3,065,000 produced in 2019.
The report indicated that the pandemic and curfew restrictions resulted in low uptake of the broiler chicken and restricted marketing of finished broilers and eggs.
Broiler meat production decreased by 2% from 114 300 tonnes in 2019 to 111 600 tonnes in 2020.
Small scale broiler production continued to dominate production accounting for 73% of the total broiler meat produced.
The report also shows that a total of 670,084 chicks were gassed in 2020 compared to 91 079 chicks in 2019.
Farmers have bemoaned the serious shortage of day old chicks.
According to the Livestock and Meat Advisory Council (LMAC) latest industry update, Zimbabwe is still experiencing serious shortages of day-old chicks, resulting in prices of the chicks shooting up by between 15% and 20% in the first two months of this year.
The shortage has been caused by the slow recovery in the breeding stock as well as persistently high demand for chicks, poultry meat and eggs on the market.
The report also shows that demand has remained high due to the shortage and high cost of beef brought about by cattle losses to diseases and the good rains following two years of drought, which have prompted cattle farmers to retain their animals for herd recovery and growth.
LMAC said the Zimbabwe Poultry Association also expects demand for day-old chicks to remain high due to the anticipated bumper maize and soyabean harvest as farmers retain these for value addition through poultry production.
