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This article comes with a free business plan outline for the GrassCutter Farming business in Nigeria.
HOW TO START A GRASSCUTTER FARMING BUSINESS
A lot of people are catching the drift on grasscutter farming, it is becoming an established source of sustainable income in Africa. The Greater Cane Rat known as the grass-cutter belongs to the rodent family, very closely related to the hedgehog, almost a look-alike except that it is smaller0. The spiny fur distinguishes the grass-cutter from true rats. Grass-cutter farming can generate a lot of income in a year, serious investors have been seen to make at least 2.5 million nairas.
Enthusiastic already? This article will narrow down what to do when about to embark on the grass-cutter business journey.
Grass-cutter farming is highly profitable. The meat is consumed largely in Nigeria, it easily is one of the top 10 animals whose meat is in the highest demand in the market. A market-ready grass-cutter is sold between N4,000 to N5,500. Five hundred grass-cutters in a year could earn you between N2 Million to N2.75 Million. Five hundred seems a large number? I agree, but with the rate at which the animal reproduces, it is a feat that can be achievable and even surpassed by a great margin if good animal husbandry practices are sustained. The animal reproduces very quickly and in good numbers, a fully grown female grass-cutter carries the pregnancy for 5 months and deliver about twice a year. Each pregnancy produces an average of four to seven young ones. Sometimes up to ten, that means one female grass-cutter could produce 8 – 20 other grass-cutters in a year, to get five hundred grass-cutters, you will be needing close to 50 female grasscutters to produce 500 grass-cutters in a year, you see it is very achievable but it takes good animal husbandry practice to cater for 50 grass-cutters and even greater to cater for 500 grass-cutters.
What’s more? The animal grows big and very fast too. Grass-cutters are easily one of the biggest rodent in Africa. A fully mature female or male that is ready for market weighs between 3.5kg for the female and 4.5kg for the male. While measuring 45cm to 60cm in body length. The standing height is between 25 to 30cm. The body size of a fully grown male is about the size of a nine inches block.
Getting Started In Grasscutter Farming
A. Colonies
Grass-cutter lives in colonies, two mature males cannot live together, a fight will break out as they are very territorial. Therefore, start with a male and few females together. A colony consists of one male and three to four females. You can then determine how many colonies you want to start with. A small farmer may start with one or two colonies, with a constitution of one male and 3 females in each colony.
B. Breeding
Grass-cutters are kept 100% for meat, it has to grow well and healthy in other to be profitable. To achieve this, a lot of concern has to be shown when it comes to the choice of breeding stock. Each colony must have a very healthy male; a healthy male makes a healthy stock. While selecting the male, pay attention on the well being, good weight gain in male animals is a very important factor that determines how healthy it is. Although to ensure that you achieve the best possible result, both have to be healthy.
C. Pen
Grass-cutters detest sleeping where they eat! If you are providing them house you must put this factor into consideration when making their cages. For a colony (1 male and 3 females) the dimension of the cage should be 180cm in length, 60cm in width, and 45cm in height. Build your cage that way, separate for each colony. If you are using a walled pen or house, make sure you build it in such way that the place they eat must be separate from where they sleep. Also the production building must be designed to protect the animals from excess temperature and humidity. And predators like snakes, soldier ants and other predators.
The floor should be overlaid with dry soft grasses to protect their feet from being hurt.
D. Feeding
Grass-cutters are herbivorous animals. They relish elephant or Napier grass, they also love sugar cane, guinea grass, gambia grass, congo grass.
Hygiene and good feeding are the most important factors for successful, profitable grass-cutter farming.
Fatten can also be achieved, the male can be fattened with broiler’s finisher or broiler starter’s feed to help attain market weight within a short period of time.
The animal also likes the root and pitch of oil and coconut palms, the bark of the Anacardium, and fruits such as half ripen pawpaw, plantain, pineapple, mango, food crops such as groundnut, rice, maize, grain legume, tubers like cassava and sweet potato also make part of their food. They can also be fed with formulated concentrates like pellet as well as other processing by-products like wheat bran, corn bran, groundnut soya, oilseed, cottonseed cakes, brewer yeast, grain legume pods, brewers’ grains, maize shucks and cobs, brewer’s yeast, etc as feed supplements.
E. Weaning time
With good, adequate feeding, the grass-cutter kids can be weaned between four to eight weeks. The weaned animals can be mated at the age of between seven to eight months from birth.
F. The Market
The market like I stated earlier is very big. Grass-cutter meat or Bush meat is really desired in the market. Everyone loves it and it sells very fast. Big restaurants use it to prepare high priced delicacies.
Most people in the city do not buy the meat because it’s very scarce. It will take the combined efforts of thousands of farmers to meet the need for bushmeat in the market in Africa right now and this grass-cutter farming business seems to be the answer.
BUSINESS PLAN OUTLINE FOR GRASSCUTTER FARMING BUSINESS
- Introduction
Executive summary
Business ownership
Farm location
Our vision statement
Our mission statement
Our business structure
Our strength
Weakness:
Market analysis
Market trends
Our target market
Our competitive advantage
Sales and marketing strategy
Sales forecast
Payment options
Financial projections and costing
Sources of startup capital
How To Download GRASSCUTTER FARMING Plan Template PDF (with financial analysis)
Above is a part of the Grasscutter farming Business Plan template in Nigerian. IF you need the complete business plan, follow the procedures to download it.
Pay the sum of N5000 (Five thousand naira only) to the account detail below:
Bank: GTBank
Name: Oyewole Abidemi (I am putting my name and not our company account so you know we are real people and you can trust us)
Ac/No: 0238933625
Type: Saving
Thereafter, send us your email address through text message to +234 701 754 2853. The text must contain the title of the Grasscutter farming business plan you want and also your email address. Immediately after the confirmation of your payment, we will send the Grasscutter farming business plan template in Nigeria to your email address where you can easily download it.
