Improving the profitability of village broiler production in PNG

Improving the profitability of village broiler farming through the use of locally available feedstuffs is a high priority in the PNG livestock sector. Lowland provinces close to the feed mills account for 60% of broiler production with 40% in highland provinces. The village broiler Industry is valued at $67m. The viability of village broiler farms in both geographical regions is threatened by the rising costs of imported ingredients used in commercial feeds.
An earlier project developed a strategy whereby PNG protein meals (plus minerals and vitamins) were used to produce a concentrate that could be fed to broilers with 50-80% of local ingredients. The feeding method resulted in good bird growth. The new project is using two sources to manufacture the concentrate feeds. The concentrate will be made by a commercial feed mill and also by regional poultry and fish feed manufacturing and distribution centres. A strong focus in the project is placed on delivery of feeding strategies to village farmers through the participation of Non Government Organisations (NGO's). Christian Leader Training College (CLTC) in the highlands and Lutheran Development Service (LDS) in the lowlands were provided funding to renovate existing poultry facilities to make them suitable for conducting regional specific broiler feeding demonstrations for village farmers. The NGO's will disseminate the feeding strategies more widely later in the project by supervising village farm trials.
The project commenced by evaluating the Apparent Metabolisable Energy (AME) of low energy (AME 2300 Kcal/kg, Crude Protein (CP) 40% ), medium energy (AME 2500 Kcal/kg, CP 43.5% ) and high energy (AME 2800, Kcal/kg, CP 41%) broiler concentrate diets at the National Agriculture Research Institutes (NARI) broiler feed evaluation unit in Lae. The data indicated that the best options were to feed broilers a low energy concentrate with added sweet potato and to feed cassava with a high energy concentrate. Subsequently four diets were tested at NARI in a large broiler grow out trial; 1) 50% sweet potato + 50% low energy concentrate; 2) 70% sweet potato + 30% low energy concentrate; 3) 50% cassava + 50% high energy concentrate and 4) 70% cassava + 30% low energy concentrate. Final body weights of birds fed diets 1 to 4 were 2.47, 2.38, 2.23 and 1.81kg respectively at 7 weeks of age. The grow out trial showed that diets 1 to 3 would be suitable for feeding birds at demonstration broiler grow out facilities established in the project in the highlands at CLTC's Banz Campus and in the lowlands at LDS's Mahalang's campus.
The critical issue as to whether the feeding strategy will be adopted by village farmers is to determine the profitability of village farmers using the concentrate strategy compared to feeding commercial diets. The first objective of the economic assessment is to determine the cost of locally milled broiler concentrate compared to the price of the commercially available alternative at several key sites in PNG. Spreadsheets of the cost of producing concentrate feed from mini-mills and profit of village broiler grow-out operations have been developed to meet this objective. The price of mini-mill concentrate derived from the mini-mill evaluation will be used in the spreadsheet for the village grow-out operation in that region (plus a cost for transport). Staff from NARI and UNitech are currently collecting feed ingredient costs, equipment costs and other fixed cost to enable the assessment to be completed.