… the Day-Old Chick Crisis: A Threat to Southwest Food Security

Poultry farmers across Southwest Nigeria are facing a deepening crisis. The cost of day-old chicks (DOCs) has surged from an average ₦520 per chick in mid-2024 to between ₦1,850 and ₦2,000 by late 2025, which is a near four-fold increase that is pushing smallholder farmers out of business and threatening the region’s food security.

In this latest policy brief, DAWN Commission examines the structural roots of this crisis ranging from middlemen who buy in bulk and resell at nearly 30% mark-ups, to the dominance of a few large firms controlling parent stock supply, underfunded hatchery infrastructure, foreign exchange pressures, and reduced hatchery capacity following a 2023 market glut.

The brief proposes coordinated action across stakeholders: attracting private investment into layer-specific hatcheries, establishing a government-backed Poultry Breeder Fund, promoting direct farmer-hatchery linkages through cooperatives, implementing export quotas to protect domestic supply, and enacting a Local Content Policy that tilts the playing field toward indigenous investors.

As the region that supplies the majority of DOCs for Nigeria and neighbouring African countries, the Southwest cannot afford to ignore this crisis.

The brief is available here