A poultry farming expert and feed miller, Mrs Opeyemi Balogun-Akinsanya, has called for the adoption of alternative grains for feed-meal preparation following the rise in price of maize.
Balogun-Akinsanya offered this advice in an interview on Friday in Lagos.
A metric ton of maize sells for over N600,000 as against the former price of N200,000 per metric ton.
The consistent increases in the price of the produce and its unavailability have plagued the poultry sector since 2022, and the situation is largely blamed on banditry and flooding of farms.
According to the expert, there are alternative grains that can be used in the preparation of poultry feed meal aside maize.
She said that sorghum, rice bran, and cassava could serve as alternatives for poultry feed meal.
“There have several experiments and researches on cassava for feed meal and the addition of cassava was recently recommended as a composition in general animal feed.
“The reason why Nigerian farmers solely rely on maize for feed production is because we are blessed with a fertile land.
“We can easily plant and harvest maize in three months, dry it out and use for feed production.”
Balogun-Akinsanya said that some developed countries, which did not produce enough maize, had been using alternative grains like for their poultry feed production.
According to her, in Europe for instance, their maize cob does not form as like Nigeria’s variety, so they have to make do with alternatives for feed production.
Balogun- Akinsanya added that the alternative grains had enough energy levels for poultry diets just like maize and urged feed millers to adopt them rather than over dependence on maize.
“Foreign counterparts still envy us that we can still depend on maize for feed production.
“If we can also do some more studies to see what we can replace maize with, then millers should be adopt it.
“With these alternative grains for feed production, we will not need to be running helter-skelter with rising price of maize and sometimes its unavailability,” she said.
Balogun-Akinsanya urged the milers and farmers to adopt the alternatives until the challenges faced by the availability of maize were overcome.
