Entrepreneurship
Poultry farmer Zinzi Manana looks back with pride when she ponders on her family's decision to abandon the hubbub of Johannesburg for an improved quality of life in Pongola, northern KwaZulu-Natal.
Back in 2012, Manana decided to quit her job as a branch secretary at a recruitment agency in Johannesburg.
While she was born in the rural KZN town, she grew up in Johannesburg.
The family’s first foray was a vegetable farm on their 14-hectare plot. However, they had to abandon this project in 2015 in the wake of a devastating drought that ravaged the province.
Speaking to Vuk’uzenzele, Manana said: “We were still trying to figure out what exactly we wanted to do. When we started we did vegetable production, but in 2015 there was drought and we couldn’t continue with that.”
Undeterred, the family spotted a gap in the poultry space and decided to give it a shot.
“At the time there was a demand for fresh broilers because in our area, they only depended on [a major] commercial producer. A lot of people didn’t like their meat and they just wanted fresh broilers.
“Being a first generation farmer, has been a very difficult journey. We didn’t have any finance, we started with nothing,” she said.
Her journey was made less stressful after she received 200 day-old chicks and feed from a KwaZulu-Natal Premier’s Office programme.
“We then just gave it a try and then just fell in love with the whole thing. We did our research on what happens after you’ve grown the broilers. We saw a gap in the market,” she said. “From there we received funding from the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) twice in 2019.”
When the poultry business started in 2016, Manana and her family constructed six broiler houses each with a 200 chick capacity. In 2018 and 2019, her poultry business, Sir Rooster Farms, received funding from the NYDA that went towards the purchasing of much-needed equipment.
The business, which has eight permanent staff, mainly supplies its produce to Pick n Pay. However, it also supplies local B&B's, lodges, and shisanyamas.
While the business currently produces 2 000 broilers per week, plans are afoot to ramp up this figure to 6 000.
Manana’s effort bore fruit in 2023 when the business was one of 45 recipients at the KZN Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s Women in Agriculture Annual Recognition Awards
in the smallholder farmer category. ¥
For more information on Sir Rooster Farm, contact Zinzi Manana on 083 551 2085. You can also visit the company’s Instagram page @sirrooster_farms
For more information about the NYDA visit www.nyda.gov.za or call 087 158 7991
Email
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp