If you’re just starting out or planning to start rearing chicken, you’ll be better off avoiding some common poultry farming mistakes. For example lack of planning, vaccination, record keeping, biosecurity failures and poor nutrition.
After all, what’s the worst that can happen if you do not alleviate these common poultry farming mistakes?
- Poor health and disease outbreak in a flock
- High mortality or loss of entire flock
- Financial loss and loss of poultry business
- Loss of morale for poultry farming
Well, you can’t really understand until you see a coop with all chicken therein dead. Of course, this is not just a simple loss of a flock.
Additionally, there is lost capital, lost time and energy, and a business failure. Even for a backyard poultry farmer, prevention of poultry farming mistakes will be better than trying to address them later on.
Common poultry farming mistakes
1. Lack of planning and preparation
On the surface, poultry farming looks like a simple and easy undertaking. However, what looks easy is the work of a farmer who is well prepared and has done the ground work to set up their farm.
A lack of planning and sufficient preparation mean that you get started without having respective resources in place. For instance you start with a flock of 100 birds only to later realize that it is impossible to make a viable business with such a small flock.
A poultry farmer of our acquaintance has repeatedly told us that in their view, poultry farming is a “numbers business.” That is, for them, a flock has to have a minimum of 1,000 birds for the business to work.
How to prepare and plan accordingly
This speaks to the business aspect of poultry farming, whose research or consultation you cannot avoid.
- Attend poultry farming training events or take up a poultry farming course if necessary
- Inform yourself of challenges in poultry farming and how to mitigate them
- Make note of core things to consider when starting a poultry farm: type of housing system, capital requirements, target market, and applicable laws.
- Join poultry farming groups on social media
- Lastly but not least, consult! Talk to fellow local farmers, certified poultry vets and your flock supplier.
2. Biosecurity failures
Biosecurity refers to active and passive measures that you implement in your farm to ensure flock health and safety. For instance, these can include coop hygiene and climate control, foot disinfection bath, and quarantine spaces.
As a result of biosecurity failures, you can lose an entire flock due to disease outbreak. Moreover, you can receive poultry culling orders or farm closures by respective authorities.
How to implement sufficient biosecurity
Chicken, are susceptible to disease. Furthermore, most poultry disease are infectious. Therefore, you should implement any and all measured which can promote flock health and prevent disease outbreak. Such may include:
- Ensure you’ve all necessary poultry farming equipment for the type farming you’re doing
- Build your poultry housing to standard and regulation
- Maintain proper temperature, ventilation and hygiene
- Ensure flock is safe from predators and parasites
- Have a disinfection foot bath at the entry of each coop
- Make sure your coop is clean, disinfected and fumigated, before habitation by a new flock
3. Poor nutrition
If there is one component that is core to poultry farming, it is nutrition. From the outset, nutrition determines your flocks’ productivity.
Simply put, cheap is expensive. Sacrificing flock nutrition can save you money in the short term but will definitely result to huge loses sooner than later. Poor nutrition can result to:
- Lack of weight gain and inability to maintain weight
- Poor health in a flock, and disease
- Poor egg production
- Loss of flock yield
- High feed conversion ratio
- Minimum financial returns if any
How to ensure nutrition quality
- Feed your flock as directed by your flock supplier
- Obtain your poultry feed from certified and well recognized brands
- If you make your own feed, use appropriate feed mixing formulae
- Ensure your chicken feed is free of toxins
- Weigh your birds to determine if their weight is at par with weight gain expectation by age
4. Improper or lack of vaccination
You must administer poultry vaccination for your flock as prescribed by your flock supplier and certified vet. Failure to do so can result in
- Disease outbreak
- High mortality rate or loss of entire flock
- Low flock yield
- Financial loss
How to administer vaccinations
- Obtain vaccinations from certified suppliers
- Follow your flock’s vaccination schedule
- Administer vaccines under prescribed conditions
- Observe your poultry to ensure proper vaccine takeup
- Isolate diseased birds to prevent the outbreak of disease
5. Lack of record keeping
This goes without saying. If you are not keeping poultry records, then your poultry farming business could as well be the stuff of guess work.
Effectively, you might as well not do any poultry farming, because what difference would it make if you had no data in that regard?
Poultry records are a core aspect of poultry farming. In addition to logging and tracking flock performance, you’re able to practice data based poultry farming. Furthermore, you can compare flocks. For instance, with previous flocks, flock supplier benchmarks and so on.
After all, how do you track your flocks’
- Schedule: vaccination, feeding, etc
- Mortality and liveability rates
- Egg production and production rates
- Financial outcomes
- Feed conversion ratio
How to keep poultry records
There is a number of apps and software out there built purposely for poultry records. However, you must pick one that suits your needs, and pocket.
If you’re just getting started or are a backyard farmer, at least keep poultry records on a notes app. If all else fails, there is still pen and paper.
Poultry farming mistakes key takeaways
- Research, plan and prepare
- Consult with business advisors, local farmers, flock suppliers and certified vets
- Attend a training event or take up a course
- Build your coop according to standards and regulation
- Implement biosecurity measures
- Follow and implement your flock schedule as prescribed by your flock supplier
- Ensure your chicken feed have sufficient nutrition
- Keep poultry records