Let’s boost our income this season with poultry farming.
Welcome back friend. In our last discussion, we looked at poultry farming and the required tools for a successful bird keeping. Remember I promised to bring the second and final part shortly. Here we go! I think it’s necessary that we touch other important considerations that are expedient in poultry farming, but before we go on, you may like to visit the first part of this article in case you’re joining us for the first time. Please use the link below.
@maxdevalue/boost-your-income-with-poultry-farming-this-season
We stopped at number 6 of basic required tools and supplies for an efficient bird keeping which is chicken feed. Now let’s continue from others.
7: Vaccines
You’ll need some vaccines for your birds. But there are additional considering factors that will determine what type of vaccines that would be appropriate for your birds. These factors includes: where you’re going to keep your birds, your country, disease profile of the area and the choice of chickens that you want to raise. What do I mean by the choice of birds that you intend raising? You might decide not to apply vaccines on your birds at all; this can happen if you want to leave your birds organically and appeal to the market that needs organic products. So all these will warrant if you’ll need vaccines or not, and the right vaccines for you.
8: Store
After getting your feeds and vaccines, you’ll need a place to store them respectively, and that’s where the issue of storage comes in. Your vaccines will need shelves inside the store while the feed bags may not need shelves and racks, but both of them will require store to keep them. You need a store also for your chicken manure; someone like me who is into gardening will find this place interesting, isn’t it? You may store your chicken manure and gradually sell them to farmers or you can utilize them in your garden. They’re good source of manure. So you’ll need another separate store or space where you can dry your chicken manure, bag them and wait for buyers.
9: You also need crates, freezer or a refrigerator
Depending on the type of chicken that you’re keeping, you might need freezers to store your meats pending when the market price rises: for example if you’re keeping broilers and notice that the market isn’t friendly at the time that they’re ready to be dispatched, you may not want to incur lost by continuing feeding them, therefore in this case, you may need to process and preserve their meats in the freezer and wait a little while as the market stabilize again.
You need crates for egg storage and packaging. This provision should be made if you’re going for layers. Eggs 🥚 also may require some sorts of refrigeration to keep them fresh for a longer period of time.
10: You need the chickens
Here you have to think about how you’re going to get chickens; are you going for day old chicks, are you going to incubate your birds by yourself? Stuffs like these are what you consider and decide on one suitable for you. Remember that you need healthy and high quality birds! Very important, otherwise you may suffer some loss along the line, it doesn’t matter your huge investment on the business; on vaccines, feeds, shelter etc. once you compromise the quality of the birds, that’s where failure starts.
11: Laying boxes
For layers, you’ll need laying boxes or laying trays because you don’t want your birds to lay their eggs all around and on the floor of their apartment. Better that you introduce layer boxes or trays which they’ll eventually go in there and lay their eggs.
Thats when your eggs will be cleaner, safe and your birds also are stimulated to lay more eggs for you because they’re comfortable. You can buy already made laying boxes or your can get furniture people do it for you locally.
12: Resting patches
Image source: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2019/11/08/beyond-eggs-part-1-mobile-chicken-pens/
Chickens needs somewhere to hang out and rest, they’re not good at standing so long on the floor unless if they’re feeding. They need the patches to exercise their natural behavior, they play, jump around and scratch their feathers.
13: Labor
Image source: https://www.kirkonulkomaanapu.fi/en/latest-news/articles/egg-production-takes-children-school/
Do you intend looking after and keeping your birds by yourself, do your have that time and chance to engage full time into your farm for supervision, or will you be needing assistance?
It’s up to you to decide. In my case, I don’t think I need a laborer for now till I’m ready to go in a bigger scale.
Put all these suggestions in place and then you’re ready to make a good poultry farm.
Thanks for reading, and remember that we’ll be discussing agriculture and farming related topics from time to time here. I’ll also will keep you updated on my poultry farm this season.
Stare safe!
Yours Max.
Image are from pixabay or otherwise provided with their source links.