FARM REPORT ▶▶▶
Cashing in on strong egg demand in Botswana
Running a large pedigree Brahman beef herd in Botswana takes up a lot of time especially when Wayside Brahman Stud is also home to a game farm, commercial beef feedlots, holiday chalets and an 18 hole golf course. However, the Munger family who own the farm also saw a niche market for eggs and set up their own layer houses a number of years ago with huge success.
A BY CHRIS MCCULLOUGH
s a relatively cheap source of protein in Botswana, eggs have become very popular and in big de- mand from consumers particularly so in Francis- town, where Rowland Munger and his son Rowly
farm with Rowland’s dad Keith, who started the farm. The egg laying enterprise is situated on the far end of the farmyard extending to seven houses with a total capacity of 30,000 birds. Currently the farm is running 14,000 birds producing around 10,000 eggs per day for sale. Eggs are delivered up to 200kms away by the farm’s own delivery vehicles to a range of retailers in the towns and to food production outlets. “We have 17 staff dedicated to the laying hens enterprise,” said Rowly. “Two staff are allocated to each house and the rest
work in the egg processing room. The staff at the hen houses work in shifts having every second weekend off.
Fewer birds per cage “The hens are kept in cages but we keep fewer birds per cage than our full capacity to give them more room and increase the animals welfare and subsequently their longevity. “Our houses are relatively simple as the first ones were built around 1990 but as time has passed we have built more mod- ern houses with automatic feeding systems from Big Dutch- man. They are still generally all quite labour intensive but there is a good supply of labour here in this area,” he said. Eggs are collected twice per day from all the houses and tak- en to the processing unit to be graded into size and cleaned. Eggs are graded into XL, L, M and S sizes with any double yolks going to the Munger households. “We sell around 10,000 eggs per day to the retailers,” said Rowly. “Eggs sell for Pula 1.66 (£0.12; US$ 0.16) each for a large egg. By far the most common packaging size is four dozen eggs which peo- ple demand more of as the packs are handy to carry coming in a carton with a handle on it. “The first egg collection is finished by mid morning and the second one starts at 2pm. Each collection takes about an hour to complete. Eggs are then graded by the automatic machine but it has to be loaded by hand. “We only produce brown eggs for sale and use the Lohmann Brown and Hi-Line
Most of the packaging is done manually. 16
Good ventilation on a hot day is essential. The roof is paint- ed white and reflects sunlight.
▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 6, 2019
PHOTOS: CHRIS MCCULLOUGH
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