By: Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The Animal Science Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST has trained selected experts in poultry, farmers, extension officers and Teaching Assistants at the University for the transfer of new technologies and improved production practices toward advancing Ghana’s poultry production to meet national needs.
It is estimated that in the tropics, including Ghana, there is a mortality rate of between 10 and 20 percent among poultry birds within the first two weeks.
The problem has been identified with farmers and farm workers’ limited knowledge in handling the birds.
Another challenge research has established is that, many poultry farms are either struggling or already collapsed mainly due to the farmers’ over reliance on unverified indigenous knowledge from other farmers.
It is to address these and other important poultry production challenges that the Animal Science Department of the College of Agriculture of the KNUST, organized the capacity building workshop for selected players in the value chain to transfer knowledge to poultry farmers, farm managers and other workers towards addressing critical setbacks in the value chain to boost national production for self-sufficiency in the medium term.
The training, a collaboration among the KNUST, Ghana Skills Development Fund, American Soybean Association and other international organizations, brought together Extension Officers, poultry farmers and Consultants.
The participants, including representatives from the National Poultry Farmers Association and Women in Poultry Value Chain from the Ashanti, Bono, Greater Accra, Western and Northern regions, went through both theory and practicals, including field visits to some nationally recognized poultry farms and the KNUST’s poultry project.
They learnt about feed formulation, farm management practices like brooding, disease identification, postmortem, biosecurity, meat processing, food safety, eggs collection, storage and transportation.
The programme Lead, who is also a Poultry Embryologist at the Faculty of Agriculture, Professor Jacob Alhassan Hamidu, noted that, the training, which is in line with KNUST ‘s mandate, is expected to, in the medium term, lead to a reduction in Ghana’s 20 thousand annual chicks import to about half while building the capacity of players in the local poultry value chain to better handle eggs, feed, birds and the meat to meet health, economic and regulatory requirement.
“As of 2022 I realized we were importing 20, 000 day old chicks and the rest. May be can cut down to about 10, 000 and the rest, our hatcheries that are doing it. If we can produce the day old chicks, we can properly incubate the eggs, then we are getting the quality chicks and therefore we’d be reducing the importation of frozen chicken”, Prof. Hamidu said.
The President of the National Poultry Farmers Association, George Dassah, noted that, the technical support such as the capacity building is among what players in the value chain need most to boost the local production and therefore commended the KNUST for the training.
Mr. Dassah said, “most farmers, it’s the brooding stage that they lose a lot of chicks. So I learnt something about brooding. It’s very good. And that’s my take away.”
The Acting Greater Regional President of the Women in Poultry Value Chain, Florence Doku, also described the initiative as timely especially in feed formulation and production for the birds.
The training focused on the “Bridging the Technology Transfer Gap for Poultry Experts and Consultants.”
