Subiri Obwogo came into 2018 expecting the worst. She was smarting from a nasty disease that wiped out her entire flock forcing her to de-populate, clean and disinfect the chicken pens and start afresh.
Below are the lessons I learnt in 2018 to make her poultry business better this year. This is her testimony
Verify feeds
First, whether you formulate your own feeds like me or rely on commercial rations, you need to test their quality regularly. You see, investing in a good chicken breed is useless if the quality of the feeds is wanting. There are many millers out there who sell substandard feeds to farmers. Poor quality feeds affect growth rate and can lead to diseases and death. Making my own feeds has helped me control the quality.
To verify, take a sample of feeds, commercial or home-made to a laboratory for testing.
You may find that feeds are the reason production of your birds has dipped drastically.
Beyond business plan
You have probably heard that before you venture into poultry farming, first develop a business plan. Okay, although it is an important working document, a business plan is just a guide to ensure the risks you take do not outweigh the benefits.
As such, it does not have to be perfect and focusing too much on it can lead to planning fatigue.
Vaccination and hygiene
I used to vaccinate my fowls against common chicken diseases such as Newcastle, Gumboro, fowl typhoid and fowl cholera and ignored farm bio-security (infection prevention) and basic hygiene practices that include things such as isolation, traffic control and sanitation. But this I changed after my flock was attacked by infectious coryza and mycoplasma, diseases that made me dispose my flock.
Another key component of farm bio-security plan is the so-called “all-in, all-out” management approach where you get rid of a given stock after sometime, clean and disinfect the premises and leave it empty for three months before bringing the new stock. The bigger lesson here is that merely vaccinating your birds against common diseases is certainly not a substitute for good hygiene practices.
Marketing
Just to be fair, marketing is such a wide and complex subject, but here’s my take: If you’re looking for buyers, don’t target anyone who eats chicken or eggs.
In fact, we read from the Holy Scriptures that although many are called, few are chosen. The idea here is to develop a product – chicken meat or eggs – to satisfy the preferences of a few but loyal customers who are willing to pay the premium.
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