Starting a Poultry Farm / Busines.Poultry Farming is becoming more popular as a business and many want to go into it.
So, starting a poultry farm is now a question that needed an answer, how do I start a poultry farm or business. Well, the answer to that question is what we want to start and discuss below.
Before you go into poultry farm or business, there are questions I want to ask you. Do you have an idea about poultry farm, have you work in a poultry farm before, do you study about it, are you a beginner? Well let’s assume you have not done it before, you are a beginner who want to start a poultry as a way of living.
There are things you need to know, which are
1. Knowledge : you need to have a knowledge about poultry farm, poultry disease, their vaccination schedule, management of poultry farm, types of birds in poultry Farm (layers, broilers, cockerel, breeders) .
Vaccination schedule – This is referring to the knowledge of vaccination of poultry animals against viral disease. We used to vaccinate poultry animals against New Castle disease, Gumboro (IBD) , Fowl Pox, Mareks . These are the common vaccination that are needed for chicken, poultry Farm.
2.
Management : This is talking about washing of the drinkers, feeders, packing the feces regularly. Feeding doesn’t mean you just give them feed and go, too much of feed given to poultry birds would be wasted by the birds and giving poultry Chicken inadequate feed may result in stunted growth. Knowing the right kind of feed, effects their production as well. For instance, I can’t give layers marsh to broiler.
3.
Types of feed
We have broilers feed, these are feed specifically for broiler chickens .
Broiler are chicken genetically made to produce meat, and for meat only. There fore they have the tendency to eat more than any other chicken in poultry. The more they eat, the more they grow.
We have broilers started and broilers finisher. Broilers starter had a lot of protein and it would help them to grow faster, the broilers started is always giving to broiler at the first five weeks of their age ( 0 – 5 weeks) before broilers finisher is giving (6 weeks till you sell them off)
We have layers feed, these are feed made for pullet (a pullet is a small chicken which will later grown into a chicken that lay eggs)
We have chick marsh
Growers marsh : This feed is giving to semi adult chicken to prepare them for laying of eggs.
Layers Marsh: This is giving to adult chicken which will make them to lay eggs.
For a start, you have two option. You can either go into broiler farm I.e raising of broiler chicken or you go into cockerel Farming
Cockerel are male chicken, they are rugged and can withstand any weather or condition, but it doesn’t mean you should treat them any how. For a start it won’t give you much problem. It’s just that they eat and they are very slow in growing. It takes 8 month before they reach maturity unlike broilers that reach maturity in 8weeks (2 Months).
The last thing I want to talk about is Budget, how much do you need to start a poultry Farm / Business.
Considering the cost of feed, because feed takes more than 70% of your Capital or cost of production in poultry Farm, business.
Note that a chicken would eat 1 bag(25kg) of feed for 200 days
It would take 200 chicken to finish 1 bag in a day, I.e they would eat one bag in a day.
How do you know estimate the amount of feed for your birds?
A carton of Chicken contains 50chicks.
50 chicks will take 4 days to finish a bag of feed (25kg)
Using this as a model, it would guide you on how to calculate for your chicken.
I think we have explain and talk the most important part of poultry Farm, please drop you comment.
