At the age of 16, when Dayo Abegunde
entered the university, she was looking for ‘fresh, different and exciting’. So
she never bothered with courses like Medicine, Engineering and Law that freshers
were clamouring for. Instead, she applied for Veterinary Medicine because in
her words, “The study of lizards and cockroaches could only be fun”. It didn’t
take long before the true state of things dawned on her. Her sophomore theory
classes were so long and deathly boring, that she wished she could change
courses. The practical classes were not any better as the formalin-charged
laboratories often led to fainting spells in some of the students. The spells
which they called ‘baptism’ was usually the aftermath of logging long hours in
class on an empty stomach. By her fourth year, classes began by 7 am and ended
at 7 pm, every day.
Even though the course turned
out to be anything but what she expected, Dayo decided that she would still
make the best of her situation. She began to search for what was in vet
medicine for her. She cast her mind back to the 4 years she had spent in school
and began sifting through her experiences for what obtained for her. Luckily, the vet medicine course includes three internships. Her second year
internship gave her some on-the-job training on a poultry farm. Her third year
internship offered her some laboratory experience and she worked in a vet
clinic, for her fourth-year internship. Grades notwithstanding, her training in
the University of Ibadan had afforded her no small wealth of practical experience.
She also decided to explore
extra-curricular activities by running for the post of financial secretary of
her departmental association; which she won. This gave her an opportunity to
develop relational, project management and fund-raising skills. The last
project which she championed was the revival of the faculty farm and cutting
her teeth on this endeavour immensely built her courage in handling daunting tasks.
In the fourth year, while seeking the path to follow, a supervisor she worked
with in the poultry farm asked her how much she could do with goodwill. She didn’t
know that answering that question would radically influence her life
thereafter. He rephrased by asking that if someone bestowed her with some
favor, how faithful would she be in managing and multiplying it. She replied
that her experience and education had brought her to a place where she couldn’t
be more ready for such goodwill.
His next question was what she
would do if the goodwill was in the form of 200 point-of-lay hens (POL). The
first thing she asked him was the cost of one bird. With his answer, she did
the math and quickly came up with the working capital figure. This impressed him
because after asking so many people the same question none followed up with her
kind of response. He then asked her to come up with a business plan of how she
would manage a 200 bird poultry-farm. Not knowing where all this was headed,
Dayo went and learned how to write a business plan; her draft even included a
cash flow and break-even analysis. He made some relevant corrections to her
submission and then shocked her with a goodwill of 200 birds; he also included a proviso
that his investment be returned after 12 months. The desire to explore the latent
economic dimensions of her course, not so much its theoretical aspect, was fully
branded in her heart.
But she had to solve the matter
of housing and feeding the birds. She got an uncompleted boy’s quarters in her
neighbourhood (at Akobo, Ibadan) which needed fixing up before it became
habitable. To finish the construction work and build pens she took her savings
and borrowed from some friends. Then she approached a feed mill and explained
her situation. Using the business plan and her poultry experience, she tried to
get a credit facility from the miller with a promise to pay back. The stunned
miller replied, “I don’t know you!” To tide the birds over till she found an
alternative, Dayo made a down-payment for chicken-feed at the same mill, using
her last N5,000. At this point, the tenacity and strong commitment she
displayed somehow appealed to the miller. She changed her mind and told Dayo
that something in her was willing to roll the dice on the business venture. Her
joy knew no bounds.
She didn’t need any farmhands
as she could easily manage 200 birds. However, it meant that she had to become
a day-student. Imagine the strain of running a poultry in addition to a 7 am to
7 pm schedule at school!
The cost of one bird in 2006,
when she began, was N650 and she started with 200 birds. In effect, she had a
loan of N130,000 and of course savings and borrowings of roughly N60,000. I will
try to summarize the feat she accomplished without leaving out any salient
points. (Kindly bear with the figures, it’s included for people who like
reading with a calculator in one hand).
ROUND ONE
Months 1 – 3: She had to invest
on intensive feeding because her POL required 1 to 2 months of rearing before
they began to lay eggs for sale.
Months 4 – 6: The birds had
begun laying enough eggs to fully reimburse the miller and friends and to conveniently
feed themselves. The fifth month saw her commencing repayments to her
supervisor. She was making an income of N35,000 to N40,000 from egg sales and
paying a minimum of N20,000 per month to her supervisor. Being a student, still
supported by her parents, she was easily saving the balance. There were some initial
problems with getting market for the eggs because she was ignorant of that
aspect of poultry farming. But when she discovered the various tiers of the
market* and how to break in, she began coasting.
Months 7 – 12: She repaid the
goodwill before the twelfth month and the impressed supervisor told her she could
come back for more birds. She didn’t. After paying back the loan she declared,
“I became financially stable”.
Month 18: By this time she was concluding
her course and she had about N480,000 in her account from the poultry business.
Over N130,000 of that figure came from selling the birds as spent layers (she
sold off each one at N750). After disposing the birds, she went for National
Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and made some more savings because she had found the
job she wanted to do.
ROUND TWO
In 2010 after completing her
NYSC, she wasn’t going to play at the level she did as a student. She planned to
grow her business and this meant leaving the small boy’s quarters; making the
problem of housing to come up once more. She also had to make some trade-off
between rearing day-old chicks (DOC) and continuing with the POL. This is
because the larger the number of laying birds the more expedient it is to use
battery cages. She didn’t have enough money to buy cages so she went for DOC.
After scouting for a while, she found a property on lease at N120,000 per
annum; she beat the owner down to N80,000.
The cost of one DOC then was
about N130 and she stocked 1,500 chicks for N195,000. Because of the increased
number of birds she employed a farmhand on a salary of N10,000 per month. The
farm also needed to be fixed up, vaccination had to be administered and the
birds required feeding but the N200,000 odd balance from her savings was not
enough. In fact, feeding alone had cost her N300,000 and she was in debt.
Consequently, she had to sell them as POL after thirteen weeks.
The birds did well; over 1,400
of them survived to POL stage. She sold them to a single buyer from Jos at N750
per bird, giving her a total revenue in excess of N1,050,000. She had made a
profit of over N350,000 in thirteen weeks from an investment of N700,000. As
you’d expect, she had tasted success and had gotten addicted to it; she
couldn’t stop.
ROUND THREE
She ploughed her profit back
into the business. With cash-in-hand exceeding N1m, she rested the farm for
three weeks and conducted thorough disinfection before continuing. Her next
stock was 2,500 DOC. To cope with the increased work, she got a second farmhand
on contract basis. Being a vet played no small part in ensuring low mortality
in her birds and she raised over 2,300 to POL level. Selling at 750 per bird
brought a revenue of over N1.7m. She had kept her expenses low labour-wise and
didn’t have any cause to renew her lease, so she could afford a small car to
aid her mobility to and fro the farm. By this time, she was paying herself a
salary of N50,000 per month.
ROUND FOUR
Her stock went up once again;
this time to 4,000 DOC. The rented farm couldn’t accommodate that number so she
had to move to another farm, located on an acre of land, at Eniosa, Ibadan.
Then this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity showed up: The property owner gave her
an option of buying the farm at the cost of N3m over two years. Of course, she
jumped at the offer. Knowing that she could make N1m every six months, she felt
that there was no way she wouldn’t meet up. The customers for her POL were now coming
from several northern states* in addition to the ones from the South. Her farm
was indeed growing.
As you know, it’s only in fairy
tales that everything is rosy and there are no mishaps; in real life it’s quite
the opposite. Dayo has had her fair share of knocks; on two occasions she has
recorded some outright losses. In one of the instances, the hatchery she had
always patronized sold her chicks with a congenital condition. By the time her
troubles were over, she had lost over 70% of the stock. It was a very painful
experience that affected her bottom line. But she remembered the good days and the
things her business had achieved. She looked back on her eight years as a
poultry farmer and recalled all the experience she had acquired, the property
she owned, the goodwill with customers, the reliable farmhands working with her
and several other tangible assets that were hers and concluded, “Dayo, you can
do it all over again!”
Now she is playing at the 8,000
day old chick level. She has bought the farm and the adjoining property for
another N1m, and interestingly she plans to keep expanding. But, more
importantly, she wants others to follow in her footsteps and reap the benefits
of poultry farming. In fact, she did what no other interviewee of mine has
done. She gave me the inside scoop that many who venture into the business
don’t have or could only acquire after so many years in it. She elucidated on
everything: gathering capital, recruiting workers, feed quality, egg management
– the whole nine yards. They are included in my next post. So watch out for it.
*More details in next post.
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