Paramungu an assistant-vet professional sells feeds and offer on-site advise to farmers
By Arnest Tumwesige
LUWERO: In Luwero Town Council, feed outlets have increasingly become a daily stopover for poultry farmers seeking both supplies and advice on raising healthy birds.
Martha Paramungu, the manager of the Hendrix Poultry Feeds branch located in Kasana-Luwero Town Council, has been operating the outlet for the past eight months. The branch is currently the only Hendrix outlet serving the entire Luwero District.
Hendrix operates under Champrisa International Limited, Tunga Nutrition, whose headquarters are located in Ntinda, Kampala.
At the branch, between 30 and 50 small-scale farmers visit daily to purchase poultry feeds. Most of these farmers keep birds ranging from 20, 50, and 100 to about 1,000 birds. They buy complete feeds for one-day-old chicks up to two weeks old, and concentrate feeds for chicks that are three weeks and above.
Paramungu, a para-veterinary professional, explains that once chicks reach three weeks, farmers have two options. They can either continue using complete feeds, which are already mixed and ready for the birds or shift to concentrate feeds.
With concentrates, farmers mix the feeds themselves using maize bran, sunflower, soybean meal and other ingredients according to the recommended rations to produce a complete meal.
However, she observes that the rising cost of maize often forces farmers to continue using complete feeds beyond the third week.
“Sometimes due to the high cost of maize, farmers prefer to remain on complete feeds after two weeks. This is actually advantageous because the chicks grow faster compared to when farmers poorly mix concentrates,” Paramungu explained.
She also noted that the company maintains strict quality standards for its feeds.
“The company provides quality feeds. Therefore issues of low quality are minimal for the time I have been here. Our quality is good and if a consignment is about to expire, it is returned to the processing plant,” she said.
Going an extra-mile to help farmers
Before joining the sales in Luwero, Paramungu had been practicing as an assistant-veterinary professional in Eastern Uganda. In Luwero, she goes beyond selling feeds by offering technical guidance to farmers.
Every weekend, she visits about three poultry farms to provide advisory services.
From her experience, she says many poultry farmers lack the technical knowledge required to run a successful poultry enterprise.
“After realizing that there is profit in poultry farming, some people start the business without seeking technical expertise from professionals. Instead, they rely on advice from peers who may not have the right knowledge,” she noted.
According to her, poor farm management especially weak biosecurity measures is the major cause of failure among poultry farmers.
This includes poor hygiene practices, poor chick housing, uncontrolled human access to poultry houses, and failure to use protective gear when entering poultry units.
She also emphasized the importance of starting with the right breeds.
“Sometimes farmers bring in poor breeds and the management is also poor. In other cases, the breed is good but the management is bad, which leads to high mortality rates,” she said.
Paramungu further explained that proper poultry housing plays a key role in bird health and productivity.
“For instance, good layer housing should not be square. But I have seen cases where farmers construct square houses which are not good for aeration. The recommended structure is rectangular”.
“When there is no enough aeration in the building, birds end up suffocating or contracting diseases. And when they start dying, it becomes very difficult to establish the exact cause,” Paramungu told GLNA.
She emphasized that regular monitoring of poultry farms and consulting professionals can greatly improve farm performance across small-scale, progressive and large-scale poultry enterprises.
Through her outreach work, Paramungu says she has helped several farmers avoid costly mistakes.
One of them is a farmer in Kikyusa sub-county rearing about 1,000 birds who had been advised by peers to introduce concentrate feeds after just one week advice she described as misleading and harmful to proper chick growth.
Meanwhile, Isa Sebalijjya, the manager of Sesolye Animal Feeds located in Lumu Zone in Luwero Town Council, has been operating in the poultry feeds business for the past eight years.
Sebalijjya says his shop receives between 40 and 60 customers daily. Most of them purchase feeds in kilograms for small birds, while a few farmers with more than 100 to 500 birds buy feeds in full bags.
When he started the business in 2018, Sebalijjya says he would receive only about 15 customers per day, but the demand has steadily grown over the years.
He sources his stock from several feed manufacturers including Kaf Fika, Intraco, Wellfed, Halisi International, Hendrix, Jubail and Agrivetis. Most of these companies are foreign-owned, except Hendrix and Halisi International.
Sebalijjya acknowledges that farmers occasionally complain about the quality of feeds. However, he says many of the complaints are later linked to disease outbreaks among the birds rather than feed quality.
“In the long run, the same customer comes and tells you that the chickens are coughing or have diarrhoea. A chicken is like a human being. You cannot expect a child who is sick to continue growing at the same rate as before,” he told GLNA.
Sebalijjya, who is also a professional veterinary officer, also pointed out challenges related to hatcheries.
He recalled a period between January and February 2025 when many farmers reported stunted growth among chicks despite purchasing them from different suppliers.
Just like Paramungu, Sebalijjya serves mainly small-scale farmers with only a few progressive poultry keepers among his clientele.
He suspects that some hatcheries sometimes hatch eggs from first time layers in order to meet high demand for chicks, which compromises chick quality.
He also attributed poor bird growth to some feed marketers who mislead farmers in order to maximize profits.
According to him, some dealers advise farmers to mix feeds using incorrect and excessive rations, which negatively affects the growth of the birds.
Need for stronger quality monitoring
Sebalijjya also raised concern over the increasing influx of poultry starter feeds from neighboring countries such as Tanzania, which he says are gradually outcompeting local manufacturers.
He believes this trend may partly be due to compromised quality among some locally manufactured feeds.
Sebalijjya therefore called on the government to strengthen monitoring of local feed manufacturers to ensure they maintain the required quality standards.
“The local manufacturers know the required standards, but as Ugandans we sometimes want to make abnormal profits,” he said.
