In one of the foundation articles written on these blog, I dealt with how agribusiness differs from conventional businesses. Agribusiness play by its own unique rules which must be strictly followed. I always preach these caution, especially to conventional business people having interest in agriculture or already set up one.
It will interest you to know that of all the available agribusiness options, poultry business stands out as one of the most lucrative, yet most dangerous venture, it can lift you up in a minute and it fold up and drop you back to your starting point in the next minute, if proper care and caution is not taken. Below are the few areas you should look into, if you have started or about to start your poultry business.
1. Have your business thoroughly planned out. You don’t just start , you should have a plan, the number you wish to produce, the market survey , how you will build your pen, how you plan to staff your pen.
2. Get good birds from good reputable source. If you do not know anything about this, kindly permit an expert to get for you or make findings from yourself.
3. Get what your capacity can handle at a time, start from small and get big.... Don’t start big, bomb, and then go small. It can be discouraging and may be hard to get up Back.
4. For non agricultural person , who have no agricultural training, I always advice you get a technical back up from an expert either in contract or as a full staff.
5. Ensure hygiene at all time, have a system in place for waste evacuation constantly, either your birds are on the floor or in the cage.
6. Restrict external persons from entering the pen house as much as possible, if they must , have a system in place to disinfect their feet before stepping in
7. Be observant, as soon as you notice any sign of disease or isolation, take the bird out and treat separately, then do general treatment for the rest of the birds.
8. Ensure the birds are getting the right quantity and quality feed from the right source.
Over feeding have bad effect on the birds, under feeding have worst effect. Have a correct and balance feeding regime for whatever type of birds you are into.
9. Have an accurate vaccine programs for the birds, vaccine failure can wipe out more than half the number of your birds in few days if you have an outbreak. If you lack the skills, let a technical person handle for you.
10. Keep proper record of bird number and weight for broilers, bird weight and egg number for layers, then most importantly, sales record .
11. Depending on how big your farm is, periodic auditing of the farm account will do a lot of help. Theft from external and internal sources has folded up most poultry businesses.
Do take note, that birds are very sensitive. Whatever you throw at them, they throw you back double of it. If you show care, and follow the rules of the birds carefully, you get your desired result in weight and egg number from them. If you mix up the rules, deliberate or by mistake, in most cases you hardly escape the “hit-back”, quite unfortunately it is always in double folds.
Good luck!!
Aliyu Ahmed Olanrewaju
Researcher/Agribusiness consultant.
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