Cross River State governor, Sir Ben Ayade, has disclosed why his administration is embarking on the establishment of an ultra-modern integrated 20,000 birds per day poultry farm.
Addressing newsmen after a tour of the facility recently, the governor said the poultry farm will feed the automated 6000 chicken per hour Calachika processing plant which equipment installation is currently going on at the Ayade Industrial Park.
“In this poultry farm we will be feeding and catering for close to three hundred birds,” he said.
“The poultry slaughterhouse that we have in Calabar has the capacity for 20,000 birds per day.
The figures keep changing as we keep changing the set of the engine, so it has the maximum of 20,000 birds per day on two shifts at 12,000 birds per two shifts of ten hours at 1,200 birds per hour”
Each of the sections in the expansive poultry farm, Governor Ayade informed, houses thousands of chicks.
“Each house here has a capacity for almost sixty thousand birds. Then you have another set of pen houses that has provision for a day old chicks. A day-old chick is the one we sell to farmers who grow chickens and now sell to the slaughterhouse.”
The governor disclosed that his diversification into poultry farming and production was with a view to broadening the Cross River economy through the export of poultry products.
His words: “The cheapest source of protein in Nigeria today is chicken, so with 20,000 birds per day which go through some processing in the cold room, we can export to the West Africa sub-region. We have three products here, the broilers which are the ones for eating that goes to the slaughterhouse, the egg production which is the hatchery, it has an incubator system that will give you the layers, the layers give you about one million eggs per day.
“You have a day old chick, we have a full hatchery, a highly automated and climate regulated hatchery that goes through the incubator and a day old chick is produced and goes to the public and the public now grows it to maturity and sell to the slaughterhouse.”
He stated that the poultry farm would be run with the latest technology in poultry production.
“We are introducing the eco-friendly system which is a new technique invented by Calvenco in Spain, we will have the biggest poultry in Nigeria.”
The poultry farm, he explained will be requiring enormous feeds to keep the birds healthy hence his government has embarked on massive maize and soya beans farming to meet demands.
“The amount of maize I need, the amount of soya beans I need is huge. That is why we have our own feed mill, so the feed mill produces feed, the feed system is highly automated, it has a silos, the feeds go in different compartments and the mixture is done by computer regulation so it is moderated through a computer system and distributed through a new technology that delivers only the ration required for the bird and the drinker system is completely different, cooling system is world-class technology too,” he said.