Nigeria’s poultry crunch lifts egg and chicken prices as chick supply collapses
Nigerian poultry farmers are facing chick shortages, expensive feed and reduced hatchery output, and the strain is already pushing egg and chicken prices higher.
Nigeria’s poultry sector has moved into a serious production squeeze shaped by shortages of day-old chicks, delayed deliveries, expensive feed and lower hatchery output. According to Punch, the pressure is no longer confined to farms themselves. It is now affecting the affordability of one of the country’s most accessible sources of animal protein, with egg and chicken prices rising even as producers struggle to keep their businesses afloat.
One case highlighted in the report is Azeez Opadola, a farmer in Ibadan. He said he was expecting more than 5,000 birds, bought two tonnes of starter feed in advance, and then watched delivery dates slip again and again until the feed had to be transferred to another farmer already in production. He estimated that about N15 million tied to his family’s poultry operation became trapped in the failed allocation. Before going fully into the family business in 2023, he had managed more than one million laying birds at a poultry company.
The cost pressure built quickly. Opadola recalled that in November 2023, a day-old chick still sold for about N640, but later prices climbed to around N1,600. As scarcity worsened, farmers alleged that middlemen began buying allocations from hatcheries and reselling them for N2,200 to N3,000 or more. Some producers were asked to pay 100 per cent upfront and still wait four months for delivery. Opadola said he paid one agent N9.8 million and another N2 million, only to face repeated postponements.
Feed inflation made the situation even harder. Farmers said a bag of pre-layer feed rose to roughly N25,000 to N27,000, while grower feed moved above N22,000. Farms in Ibadan, Abeokuta and parts of Lagos started scaling down, and operators that once handled 50,000 to 250,000 birds cut capacity sharply. At the same time, demand disruptions had already damaged the sector. During the earlier downturn, industry participants said tens of thousands of crates of eggs had to be buried or disposed of because consumers could no longer afford them.
Kunle Ogunwomoju, a technical director at a hatchery in Oyo State, linked the prolonged disruption to the 2023 cash crunch, fuel-subsidy removal and foreign-exchange reforms. He said his hatchery lost eggs worth nearly N1 billion when demand collapsed and that the industry’s reliance on imported grandparent stock lengthened the recovery cycle. In his account, it takes 16 to 18 months for imported grandparent birds to translate into commercial chick supply for farmers.
The production and price effects are now visible across the market. Ogunwomoju said his company’s weekly output fell from about 100,000 layer chicks to just 12,000 at the peak of the crisis and has only recovered to around 30,000 to 40,000. Feed costs at one point reached N1.3 million per tonne before easing to about N750,000. In the market, a crate of eggs now sells for roughly N6,000 to N6,500, a live mature broiler for N15,000 to N20,000 and old layers for N8,500 to N9,000. For a sector widely viewed as central to Nigeria’s food security, the squeeze is still far from over.