Brighton Gumbo Business Reporter
THE price of chicken is expected to remain unchanged in Bulawayo despite the three percent decline in the cost of stock feed, an official said yesterday. The Zimbabwe Poultry Farmers Association chairman George Nare said the unit price of a 50 kilogramme bag of stock feed was now pegged at $30 from an average price of $31.

“We’re not foreseeing any change as far as the chicken price is concerned. “The slight price fall of stock feed is nothing worth reviewing down our chicken prices on because we still feel that the feed prices are high and they’ve to be slashed further,” he said. Nare said the stock feed costs remain a cause for concern for poultry farmers in the city, though in Harare the price of chicken per kilogramme had already gone down to around $2.50 from $3.50.

He attributed the fall in Harare chicken prices to a flooded market and the availability of a number of feed suppliers who tend to price competitively. “The feed cost makes up 85 percent of the costs of raising a chicken.

“At the end of the day who benefits is the one producing volumes while those producing at a smaller scale are outplayed,” Nare said. However, Nare commended the 31 percent price reduction by the suppliers of day-old chicks saying it was a relief to poultry farmers. “We feel relieved by the reduction in the price of day old chicks by suppliers.

“We used to buy 100 chicks at $85 but now we buy them at $65 which is something good to the prospects of poultry farming,” he said. Nare praised a Bulawayo-based chick supplier for ensuring that local farmers are supplied as in the past farmers travelled as far as Harare and Chegutu to buy day-old birds.

“We’re also happy about the improved situation of vaccines. Vaccines are now readily available in stores to help our poultry,” he said.