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The market for edibles is huge. This is true for humans, as it is for livestock. In both cases, it’s really for one reason- the need for the living to stay alive and healthy. And for livestock owners, it’s important that their animals are healthy because the survival of their business depends on it.

The livestock feed business in Nigeria has been dominated by foreign players, but there’s plenty of room for local producers to maneuver. If the plan is right and the execution is spot on, the venture could yield handsome profits for the entrepreneur who embarks upon it.

If you’re interested in setting up a livestock feed mill but have little idea how to go about it, you’ll find this article helpful.

What You Will Need

Here are the things you’ll need to get in order to start off:

Raw Materials

Major raw materials used in making livestock feed include maize, soybean meal, groundnut cake, rice bran, sorghum, wheat offal, fish meal and common salt. The choice of ingredients will depend on what kind of animal feed you’re producing, the regularity of supply, the quality of ingredients, and nutrition.

Equipment

You’ll need grinders to grind feed ingredients, mixers to mix feed ingredients, pelletizers to compress the feed ingredients into bits, sifters, weighing scales, and an oven (or a kiln). Customized bags for packaging feed will have to be provided.

There will also be a need for regular power supply, so a power generator should be in place.

How to Start

  1. Come up with your feed formula.

Decide how much of each ingredient you will use. You can find information about possible formulas online; better still, find out from established feed producers what formulas they use, and see if you can adopt something similar.

  1. Choose a location.

The location should be good enough to accommodate a feed factory, as well as a warehouse for raw materials and spare parts. Of course, there are cost considerations here- it depends on what you’re able to afford, and what scale you would like to begin with.

  1. Purchase raw materials and equipment.

Equipment can be bought or custom made for you. Raw materials can be obtained from farms which produce them as products, byproducts or waste, or purchased in bulk from dealers.

  1. Begin production.

With the equipment and raw materials in place, you’re ready to begin production.

  1. Market your product.

Products can be marketed through sales representatives, supplied to stores, or sold to your own distribution outlet.

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This article was first published on 15th February 2017

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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