Latest update March 19th, 2025 5:46 AM
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No chicken shortage for this Christmas season
– Chicken price expected to fall early next year
Major players in the poultry industry are confident that there will be no shortage of chicken on the local market for the Christmas season. Chicken producers usually look forward to December which sees the highest consumption of chicken.
According to a large scale chicken producer, poultry rearers were recently told that based on hatching eggs being imported; Guyana would not be experiencing a shortage on the local market. It takes three weeks for the eggs to hatch and six weeks to rear chickens. As such chickens for the season are already on the ground.
No shortage of poultry this Christmas
He noted that for the year his company produced about eight million chickens and during this month about 130,000 chickens will be produced weekly.
The producer said that it is unlikely that his company would increase its price for Christmas. The price for chicken may drop early next year since the price of soya meal an important ingredient for chicken feed has been reduced.
He said that a shipment of soya meal is slated to arrive in Guyana one week before Christmas. As such, the next crop of chicken is expected to cost less depending on the market. The producer said that the price for chicken is usually determined by the cost of ingredients for feed and market demand.
The impact of both was felt throughout the year with the price of chicken reaching as high as $400 per pound. Some large companies were able to keep their prices down while some small producers enjoyed the price increase but faced high feed prices.
But, all was not well in the industry with high mortality rates of chicks early in 2012. This caused many small farmers to either pull out of the market or reduce their production significantly.
The increasing demand for poultry in the gold mining industry further reduced the availability of chickens on the coastland where the bulk of the population resides.
According to the large scale producer, the demand for chicken in the gold mining industry was overwhelming this year. He opined that owing to the presence of electricity in mining camps, miners are not depending primarily on pickled meats but are opting for chicken.
While, chicken is being transported from the coastland to satisfy miners in the hinterland some small farmers are claiming that chicken is being smuggled into Guyana from neighbouring countries.
The reportedly smuggled chickens that are integrated into the local market are larger and cheaper posing unfair competition to small scale farmers. Farmers are worried that they may be unable to make a profit during this Christmas season owing to the availability of the cheap chicken.
One producer opined that the ‘smuggled’ chickens are coming from North America into neighbouring countries and then crossover into Guyana.
If Guyana were to produce chicken cheap it will need to produce feed locally, the producer said.
He added that corn cultivation would be conducive in the Interior Savannah since sandy soil does not have sufficient nutrients for the corn. However, this operation will be machine intensive and require large investments.
In addition, the paving of the Linden to Lethem Road would be pertinent to the operations to ensure unhindered, timely and cheap transport of the produce.
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