HOW I LOST 5 MILLION NAIRA TO POULTRY FARMING. MISTAKES MADE, LESSONS LEARNT AND THE WAY FORWARD

This article is my experience on how I lost money Poultry Farming. The business of poultry is a very lucrative one especially when you decide to go into broiler farming. The fact that we as humans must eat and procreate, makes it a business that cannot go out of style, and would have an ever increasing demand; but if you do it wrongly, then your in for the shocker of your life.

Broiler farming is a very fantastic business that can yield as much as a 30-50% return in a space of 6 – 8 weeks, depending on your market and production methods.

Now let’s get down to the real issue, How in the world can yon loose that much?

The tale begins like this, as you already know, I am a farmer and presently into poultry and catfish farming, with farms in Port Harcourt and Calabar all in Nigeria. I have been in catfish farming for the past 8 years and decided to branch into Poultry Farming.

We basically started with 1,000 birds, which increased to 2,000 and all this time we were just breaking even and learning from our experiences.

In the construction of the farm we decided to use the deep litter system for the brooding house and suspended wooden structure with a netted base for the weaning house (our reason was the cost of sawdust was too high), basically being able to harvest the chicken dropping from the cemented floor.

We basically initially stocked the previous 2,000 birds in November and just narrowly missing the Christmas harvest. So the plan was now to meet the Easter rush. Up till this moment we had sold to the people in a market, there in Calabar.

So before stocking, we approached chairman of the market to discuss how many Can the market off take during this period and what sizes should they be. He basically gave us all assurances that the market can comfortably carry 5,000 birds and during the Easter period we should be planning on producing 2.5 – 3kg live weight birds, which would take us about 7-8 weeks to achieve. So we decided to do 6,000 birds, to cover for looses and any additional birds would be transported to market we were trying to build in Port Harcourt.

What happened next was we then went ahead, created an airtight plan and began production, meeting the target. The challenges we then had began when we approached the 8th week. We approached the market chairman informing him the birds were ready for sale. The stories from him started from, we are coming next week, to let them grow bigger and even when they came to buy what they bought were between 70 – 200 weekly, all this time the birds needed to be fed to maintain their weight.

Our planned time to sale was 8 weeks and we ended up keeping the birds for almost 14 weeks before we completely sold out.during this period we decided to kill 950 to store in a Cold-room and e got another shocker. Some of the birds went bad and for the others, some were not so fresh anymore, so a difficult sell. We started having major mortalities because the birds were not eating theft ions they were used to and at the times they were accustomed. Due to slow sales and lack of funds.

During this same period we were able to find some market in fast food outlets both in Calabar and Port Harcourt, and to be able to sell fast enough we reduced the price to cost and even making a loss at some times just so we don’t keep feeding them and loosing more on the feeding.

What were the mistakes made and lessons learned?

1. Trusting a supply that is based on word of mouth and not bound by any contracts. Even if such arrangements are made always have very solid backups. Basically have demand more than you can supply.

2. Putting the birds into a cold room with handlers that you can’t trust fully. It is better to either have your own cold room or use cold rooms of companies you get very good referrals to.

3. Always create a plan with very large allowances. The initial plan was for 8 weeks, but since no sales were made during 8 – 9 week period, there was a major shortage of funds and the birds suffered greatly which led to serious mortalities and led to more mortalities even after the 9th week.

4. Our farm is found in a village so we source local hands for processing, 40% of the time the birds are to processed neatly enough causing some customers to reject the birds and also spoiling the relationship we are trying to build with the customers.

What is the way forward

1. We have gone and acquired freezers and Generator to power them. We intend freezing the birds ourselves from now on. The plan is immediately the birds get to 1.5 kg processed weight we process and store.

2. Contracts have been entered for supply of processed birds with some hotels, caterers and get food outlets. Even if some were not signed on paper, this time around we are producing less the what the proposed demand is.

3. We are sourcing our own small scale processing machine to begin processing and package ourselves. Helps retain the fast food market and lead to less rejection of processed birds.

4. We’ve decided to change our focus from the supply of the live bird market to the processed market. Our goal is to sell 85% of all we produce to fast food outlet and the likes and the remaining 15% to the market people.


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