Broiler producers need protection from defective chicks suppliers

Farming issues, Mhlupheki Dube

LAST week I had an opportunity to visit one poultry producer in one of the districts in Matabeleland North.

The producer is running quite a big broiler production enterprise by communal standards. As the conversation with this farmer landed on the challenges they face, one particular stuck to my mind primarily because I have heard it a number of times from a wide range of smallholder broiler producers.

It is the issue of high chick mortalities in some batches. This got me thinking a bit and hence this week’s discussion points.

The farmer spoke of losing about 20 percent in one batch within a week. This had never happened on their farm for the four or so years that they have been in operation. The acceptable percentage loss due to mortality is anything below two percent. They are trying to engage the producer of chicks for a possible replacement.

I know that the knee jerk reaction for most chick suppliers and producers is to blame the farmer. It is easier and profitable for them to assume that it is the fault of the farmer than it is theirs. The farmer must have done something wrong and they will go on to claim that you are the only one who have come back with a complaint of chick mortality, a claim which they know you have no means of verifying.

Only a few suppliers and producers can own up to supplying defective chicks and they usually own up to big customers for fear of losing business. Now if you are the common hundred chick customer and you lose 60 of them to mortality in one week, most of the suppliers are unlikely to listen to you.

My point here is not to exonerate poultry producers of wrong doing that may lead to chick mortality. Some farmers due to lack of production knowledge may actually cause mortalities by failing to abide to expected production conditions such as cleanliness, disinfection and warmth provision in their fowl runs. Some losses can be a result of poor transport conditions of the chicks from the supplying agent to the farmer’s homestead.

However, there are chick mortalities that are a result of defective chicks produced by the hatchery companies. Hatcheries produce massive numbers of chicks and some chicks for one reason or another become defective or rejects. Every factory production process has some reject products. It’s normal.

However, if these reject chicks slip through the quality check points and they eventually land in the fowl run of a poor poultry farmer causing him/her massive loss, the hatchery company should be liable.

The chick producing companies should put in place mechanisms that ensure that there is restitution for such losses to the farmer.

A plethora of complains about mortalities against a certain batch of chicks should be indicative enough of a production malfunction and the company should take it on the cheek.

It is unfair to let smallholder poultry producers shoulder the effects of defective chicks. These are the kind of issues that associations for poultry producers should be tasked to handle. There should be a platform for producer faced with such a predicament of unprecedented chick mortalities to go to.

Also there should be mechanisms that obligate hatcheries to restitute the farmer for the losses incurred. It should be made as part of the product standards that should there be a malfunction in the product and the hatchery is at fault, the farmer must get replacement chicks.

The situation where most of those losses due to defective chicks are passed on to farmers cannot be allowed to continue. I know big poultry producers have the means to engage the hatcheries and get the situation rectified if they encounter such a situation but I am more worried about your regular small holder producers.

Individual numbers could be small but I am sure if these are consolidated they account for several thousands of broiler producers and then imagine how much chick mortality liability is passed on to this huge constituency which is made of small production units.

My point is while smallholder poultry producers have their share of contribution to chick mortality in their production units, but some extraneous factors like defective chicks can contribute and this should be rightly borne by the hatcheries not the farmer. UyabongaumntakaMakhumalo. Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer.

He writes in his own capacity. Feed [email protected] cell 0772851275