DOMESTICALLY, the ani­mal feed industry has been hampered by the lack of quality feed, poor government support for farmers and unavailability of young stock. Notwithstand­ing Nigeria is estimated to rake in over N800 billion from the sector as consumption is increasing daily.

At present, the total sup­ply of all the locally produced feedstock does not appear to be sufficient to meet demands, especially with respect to the animal protein supplements that are currently imported.

The global animal feed mar­ket can be segmented into five divisions based on livestock: poultry, swine, ruminant, aquaculture and others, and the cost of their feeding is on the high side especially the pet animals, which are also known as companion animals.

The major ingredients in animal feed are maize and soybeans. Other raw materials that can be used to produce animal feed include ground­nut, sorghum, and cassava and the major diets ingredients include cereals, fats and oils, which provide the protein and energy required for animals to maintain good health.

Daily Sun investigations reveal that indirect devalua­tion of the naira had impacted negatively on the major raw materials for producing animal feed, especially the maize and soybean. There is a pest ravag­ing maize production present­ly in Nigeria, which farmers are still battling to find a lasting solution to.

Though the Alltech Global Feed ranking in 2015 put Nige­ria as one of the world\'s largest emerging animal feeds produc­ers with a better opportunity to penetrate the international an­imal feeds export market. The ranking put Nigeria\'s feed sec­tor as number 40 in the world out of 130 leading animal feed producing countries in the world, representing a signifi­cant progress from the previ­ous ranking of number 51.

The Registrar of the Nigeri­an Institute of Animal Science (NIAS), Dr. Oyedele Oyesiji, who announced the ranking recently, said there was a signif­icant rise in the livestock sector in 2014 and 2015, particularly in aquaculture production and the poultry meat sector.

In 2015, NIAS statistics re­vealed that Nigeria hit 5.3 mil­lion metric tonnes of animal feeds with the following break­down: egg, 3.1 million metric tonnes; chicken meat,1.08 mil­lion metric tonnes; aquacul­ture, 647,750 metric tonnes; pork, 265,000 metric tonnes; milk, 53,000 metric tonnes; beef, 41,250 metric tonnes; pet foods, 35,000 metric tonnes respectively.

Original source: The Sun (Nigeria) By Steve Agbota

Via World-Grain.com // Full article