Shea Cake in Ghana Poultry Feed

Where the cake comes from and why it turns up in the north

Ask a poultry keeper in the north about shea cake and you will usually get one of two answers. Either they have fed it for years without trouble, or they have watched a flock turn its beak up at it and lose weight. Both answers are true. The difference is nearly always how the cake was made and how much of it went into the mash.

Shea cake is what is left after the fat is pressed out of shea kernels. The tree, Vitellaria paradoxa, grows across the savannah belt, so the cake is most common in the Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Savannah regions. Women's groups and small processors crack, roast, pound and press the nuts for butter. Once the butter is out, the solid residue is dried, bagged and sold. That residue can then travel south through the same trading chain, often in sacks with no processing date on them.

Notice what is missing from that chain. Nobody tests the cake as a feed. It is a by-product of the cosmetics and cooking trade, and a seller who has never fed a chicken can still sell it by weight. That makes it a candidate for a careful farmer who will sniff, crush and question each sack, and a poor choice for anyone who buys it because it looks like cheap protein on a roadside stall.

We are not against shea cake. We are against feeding it on faith. The rest of this article sets out what the published research says, how much you can safely use, and the checks we would run before a single kilo goes into a bird's trough. If you are looking for other cheap protein options, our cheap feed alternatives guide compares several of them side by side.

What the published tables say about its nutrients

The figures below come from the Feedipedia shea entry, which pulls together several analyses. They are averages across samples, and the samples disagree with each other more than you would like. Treat them as a reason to test your own cake, not as a label you can trust.

Two things stand out. The protein is useful, and the tannin load is high enough to matter. Tannins are the reason shea cake behaves differently from maize or soya in the trough. They tie up part of the protein you are paying for, and they make the mash unpleasant, so a bird may eat less of the whole ration without you noticing for a week.

The range matters as much as the average. Two sacks from different processors can differ on fat and protein by a wide margin. That is why a single figure from a book is no substitute for a sample you have checked yourself, and why our feed formulation basics ask you to use lab or supplier figures for every ingredient you cannot vouch for. The soya and groundnut cake that carry most protein in many Ghanaian rations are covered in our soya and groundnut cake guide, which is the benchmark you should compare shea against.

Why birds leave it in the trough when the level creeps up

Shea nut is bitter. The Feedipedia entry says the seeds are very bitter and unpalatable, and it names phenolics, tannins and saponins as compounds that irritate the digestive tract. A little in a mash is tolerable. More than that and the birds start pushing it around the feeder, pecking the good pellets and leaving the rest.

The bigger problem is what happens when they do eat it. Broiler studies cited in the same source found that higher levels of shea cake lowered red blood cell count, haemoglobin, haematocrit and serum cholesterol. In plain terms, the birds were getting less out of their blood and their feed than they should. A flock that looks fine in the first week can go pale and slow later on, and the farmer blames the strain, the weather or the vaccine when the feed was the cause.

Watch for three signs. The first is a feeder that is full at seven in the morning and still half full at dusk. The second is droppings that look looser than your usual. The third is a flock that stops gaining on the weigh day you set for yourself. If you see all three after switching to shea cake, stop the switch first and call your vet before you change anything else. Do not add more of something else to fix a problem you created with the cake.

The 2.5 per cent ceiling, worked out for a real batch

The most useful number in the literature is the one that tells you where to stop. The Feedipedia entry gives a maximum recommended inclusion of 2.5 per cent of shea cake in broiler diets. That figure is for broilers. The sources we checked did not give an equivalent maximum for layers or free-range birds, so we do not treat 2.5 per cent as safe for them. We would keep those flocks lower, and only after a test run.

Inclusion is a share of the whole mix, so do the sum before you buy the sack. Here is how it works out on common batch sizes.

Here is the mistake we see most. A farmer mixing 500 kg of broiler mash tips in a whole 50 kg sack of cake because the sack is there. That is 10 per cent of the batch, which is four times the ceiling. Weigh the cake on the same scale as the rest of the ingredients, write the figure on the batch record, and do not guess with a plastic cup. For the other by-product cakes that farmers mix in, our notes on palm kernel cake and cottonseed cake show why each one needs its own limit, and why shea cannot be treated as interchangeable with either.

The ceiling is a maximum, not a target. If you can hit your protein target with soya alone, the cake is only a saving if it does not cut growth. Weigh it against what you lose, not against the price on the sack.

Theobromine: what is known, and what is not

Theobromine is the alkaloid that makes cocoa bitter, and it is poisonous to dogs. Feedipedia lists it among the alkaloids found in shea trees and their by-products, citing Dei and colleagues from 2008. It does not give a figure for how much sits in the cake, and it does not give a safe level for poultry. We could not find a verified poultry threshold anywhere in the sources we checked.

That gap matters. If a seller tells you shea cake is safe because it contains only a little theobromine, ask for the number and the source. If they cannot give you either, they are guessing, and so are you if you take their word for it. We are not going to invent a threshold to sound precise, and you should be wary of anyone who gives you one without a reference.

What we can say is practical. Theobromine is one more reason not to feed raw or half-processed shea. It is also one more reason to keep the cake under the broiler ceiling, and to keep layers and breeders on a protein source you have tested until a poultry figure is published that you can check. If you are unsure whether a particular lot is safe, take a sample to your district veterinary office or to the CSIR Animal Research Institute in Accra, and follow the advice you get.

Keep cake away from dogs too. A bag left open in the yard is a meal for a dog that is not your own.

Why whole shea nuts never go in the bin

Some farmers reason that if the cake is fine, the nut must be fine too, or that the nut just needs crushing. It does not. The whole kernel is bitter, and its tannin and saponin load is the reason the pressed cake is a waste product in the first place. Crushed or whole, raw kernels need processing before any bird sees them.

The mistake to watch for is mixing a handful of nuts into the scraps for free-range birds. The birds tend to peck at the bitter pieces and leave the rest, and the scraps go off in the heat before the flock eats them. Keep the nut in the processing shed, keep the cake in the feed store, and never let the two meet. A labelled bin for each costs nothing and removes the risk of a sack being grabbed in a hurry.

There is also a question of what you are buying. A sack labelled shea feed that is mostly whole nut, or mostly husk, is not the pressed cake the tables describe. The composition will be different, and so will the risk. Ask the seller to show you the material, not just the sack.

Drying and storing the cake through harmattan and the rains

Shea cake that arrives damp is a storage problem before it is a feed question. Moisture lets moulds grow, and some moulds produce aflatoxin. Our feed storage and aflatoxin guide covers the toxin in depth, so this section sticks to what changes with shea cake specifically.

The cake is oily residue with a lot of fibre, and it heats and clumps in a sack that sits in a damp corner. The harmattan is dry, so the cake keeps well, but the dust settles on it and the sacks pick up grit, so keep them covered. The main rains in the south run roughly from April to July, and a sack left on a concrete floor for a week can turn musty even in a store that looks dry. Lift sacks onto pallets, keep them away from the wall, and keep a fresh sample in a clean jar so you can smell the batch again if it changes.

1. Store sacks on pallets or planks, at least a hand's width off the floor.
2. Keep the cake away from fertiliser, pesticides and cleaning chemicals.
3. Use the oldest sack first, and write the date of arrival on every sack.
4. In dry weather mix only what you need for three to five days. In the rains, mix less.
5. Throw away any cake with grey-green fur, a sour or musty smell, or clumps that stay wet when you crush them.

If a sack gets wet in transit, do not dry it in the sun on a tarpaulin and mix it that afternoon. Spread it thinly under cover for several days, turn it daily, and only then decide whether it is still good. A warm heap in the middle is a sign of spoilage, not a sign that the cake is ready.

How to check a sack before it goes in the mix

You will not get a laboratory result for every sack, and most farmers never will. You can still run a simple set of checks that catches the worst lots before they reach the birds.

Start with the smell. Good cake smells roasty or neutral. Anything sour, fermented or musty is out, however cheap it was. Next look at the colour. Patches that are darker, greener or whiter than the rest of the sack usually mean moisture or mould. Crush a handful in your palm. It should break into a dry, slightly gritty powder. If it stays cold and damp, or forms a paste, put the sack aside and do not use it.

Then ask the processor three questions and write the answers on the sack or in your batch book. How were the nuts roasted or heated? How was the cake dried? How long has it been in the bag? A supplier who can answer all three is one you can work with. A supplier who shrugs is telling you what the batch record would have said if there were one.

Finally, keep a retained sample of every sack you open, in a clean sealed jar with the date. If a flock falls off the feed three weeks later, you will have something to compare against, and so will your vet.

Rebalancing a grower mash when the cake takes a share of protein

Shea cake is not a like-for-like swap for soya. Soya carries a lot of digestible protein and a useful spread of amino acids. When you put shea cake into a grower mash you usually have to rebalance the rest of the ration, not just take some soya out and tip the cake in.

Here is a simple illustration for 100 kg of grower mash. The figures show the arithmetic and the reasoning. They are not a formula to copy. Suppose the standard ration uses 20 kg of soya meal. You replace 2.5 kg of that soya with 2.5 kg of shea cake, which is the broiler ceiling for that mix. The cake brings much less usable protein per kilo than soya, and far more fibre, so the mash needs a formulation check on crude protein, energy, and the amino acids lysine and methionine. Most farmers skip that step. The birds then grow a little slower and nobody can say why.

Work the sum on the protein first, then on energy, then on the amino acids. If the mash comes out short on protein, put the soya back and cut the cake to zero. A ration that is cheaper per kilo but gives slower growth is not a saving. It is a delay you pay for at the market.

Our advice is to run a proper formulation before you swap any protein source. The basic method is set out in our formulation basics, and the step-by-step mixing routine is in our guide to mixing your own poultry feed.

Which birds can take it and which should not

Here is how we would sort shea cake by flock type. This is the advice we give customers, and it is deliberately conservative because the published data is thin.

Notice what we did not write. We did not put shea cake in the starter, and we did not give layers a set figure. The honest answer for layers is that the research is thin. Until you have a tested sample and a few weeks of egg records to compare against, treat it as something to try on a small group and not on the whole house.

If you are restocking or changing breeds and want to talk through the ration, message us on WhatsApp at +233 24 915 1503. Tell us which chicks you are running and we will point you to the right breed page, with the feed notes that go with it. You can also browse our broiler day-old chicks and layer day-old chicks pages to see what each line needs. Our current starting prices are on their own page, and you can place an order through the order form once you have chosen a line.

Mistakes we see with shea cake, and the fix for each

These are the errors that come up again and again when farmers first try shea cake. Each one has a simple fix.

• Buying the cheapest sack without asking how it was made. Fix: ask the three questions, and walk away if the answer is that it came from the north and nobody knows.
• Adding a scoop "to be safe" on top of the formula. Fix: weigh the cake and write the figure on the batch record.
• Putting cake in chick starter because the chicks seem to eat everything. Fix: starter stays on a tested soya or fishmeal protein source.
• Switching a whole house to a new mash in one morning. Fix: change the ration over five to seven days, and check the feeder every morning for leftover pellets.
• Keeping the cake in the same room as medicines or chemicals. Fix: a separate store with labelled sacks and a locked door.
• Judging the cake by the price tag. Fix: judge it by the protein it gives and the growth you get, after rebalancing.

The last point deserves a moment. Shea cake can look like a clever saving on a feed sheet. It becomes a loss when a flock grows slowly, the eggs come out smaller, or a batch of birds goes to market later than you planned. Count the whole cost, including the weeks you would have gained with a better ration. Our frequently asked questions cover more feed and flock questions if you are still deciding.

Questions farmers ask