LIVING FROM ANIMAL LETFOVERS

Amulike Sanga picks bones ready for burning (Photo: Ibrahim Joseph)

By Polycarp Machira
The growing demand for improved quality animal feeds has created ready market for Amulike Sanga resident of Majengo in Dodoma who deals in the production of locally made feeds.

The 35-year-old father of two has been collecting bones and blood from the Tanzania Meat Commission (TMC) abattoirs and mill them to animal feeds for the past three years.

With no educational background, Amulike who hails from Iringa Region is proud of his job and urges young people to be creative in doing anything legal to make a living instead of sitting idle expecting the care of the government.

Speaking with The Guardian on Sunday this week, Amulike argued that it was lack of education and employment that drove him to the business after discovering that poultry feeds were in great demand.

His work involves collection of blood and bones from abattoir, boil them and dry them on the sun some 65 kilometers in a bush away from Dodoma town to avoid inconveniences with area residents, before milling to find the final products suitable for poultry feeds.

He says bones are burned deep in the night when there is no strong winds before drying during daytime.

However, the manual-going Amulike has plans for the future, saying he will go machinery as his business grows, saying; “my plan is to expand the business to reduce the manual labour through application of machinery.”

He also vows to make Sh7m to own a milling plant to reduce costs he currently incurs in using services of other millers.

But Amulike does not work alone. With him are five assistants each fetching daily wage of Sh5,000 in helping the boiling and drying of the blood and a guard of the stock of raw bones and blood.

He runs a bilateral joint-venture with a partner he declined to disclose but insisted they shared profit in equal terms from a shop they run at Majengo market where they also sell raw bones and blood for Sh3,000 and Sh2,000 for a kilogramme respectively.

“The demand for locally made poultry feeds is high as some of the imported feeds have been proved to be fake,” he says.

Amulike who is planning to register his company with a brand and trade mark boasts himself of being loyal tax payer, saying he pays a total Sh200,000 to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA).

His assistant Juma Ali (20) says “I know other guys look down upon me because they think I do an odd job; but I tell them what I do is better than loitering.”

He says when he first came to Dodoma town he did a lot of odd jobs that earned him pea nuts  compared to what he earns now in Amulike’s venture.

“My life has actually improved,” he says.
 Experts maintain that bone meal as a mixture of finely and coarsely ground animal bones and slaughter-house waste products is quite important in poultry feeds.

 It is also used as an organic fertilizer for plants and as a nutritional supplement for animals. As a slow-release fertilizer, bone meal is primarily used as a source of phosphorus and protein.

Finely ground bone meal may provide a quicker release of nutrients than the coarser ground version of bone meal.

On the other hand blood meal after milling is a dry, inert powder made from blood used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer and a high protein animal feed.

It is one of the highest non-synthetic sources of nitrogen. It usually comes from cattle as a slaughter-house byproduct. It can be spread on gardens to deter animals such as rabbits, or as a composting activator.

 It may also be used as an animal food supplement for cattle, fish and poultry and is in fact widely used due to its the high lysine content.

In some countries, it is mixed with molasses before use as animal feed.
Some poultry keepers in town commended Amulike for the good work.

“I used to buy imported feeds for my poultry until a colleague of mine introduced me to Amulike”, said one Agness , poultry keeper in Nkungu.

She urged fellow entrepreneurs to cherish locally made products by purchasing them in large quantities as a way to promote the local producers in line with the government’s policy.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY