HOW PROFITABLE IS BROILER FARMING

How profitable is broiler farming in Nigeria? this particular question has been asked by many people that want to venture into poultry farming, especially of broiler. Every body in Nigeria, especially in Igbo land will know how demanding and costly chicken are, especially broilers during Christmas period, New-year time, Easter period, Salah time. I have seen people ask alot of questions about poultry Farming, it’s cost to set up and how much money that is to be made if successful. Let me start by answering how profitable it is with 1,000 broilers

The total amount of profit to be made with 1,000 broilers is between #2,170,000 (2.1 million naira) to 3,000,000 (3 million naira)

Disclaimer: the figure above can be made when the chicken are properly managed and there is low death rate and my estimate might not be totally correct because of change in prices of commodities.Let’s assume you have land ready, or you can buy land in the village which are less expensive compared to the ones in the city. I didn’t add the expenses of land in this article because I believe before you talk of starting a poultry business, your first priority must be land!. you need at least one plot of land for this business.
In this post, am writing from my experience in 2019 when I built my first poultry house and bought 1,000 pieces of day old broiler chicks, that’s 20 cartons of broiler chicks at the price of 7,000 naira per carton which is 140,000 for 20 cartons. It took me 200,000 naira to set up my poultry house on one plot of land, although I didn’t procure any cage,but the house was good enough for them. I had to employee labourer for 10,000 naira for the 3 months it took to mature, that’s 30,000 naira. 150 bags of feed at 3,000 naira each which is 450,000 naira. Medicine and transportation- 10,000 naira. Light, although I have solar system which I used to provide light for them, so I can’t count it as expense.In all round it took about 800,000 naira in all till they matured to sell, lucky I only lost 10 and the rest lived, I sold some for 3,000 naira and some for 3,500 naira in the December period which was very cool for my first trial or experience with broiler farming, bringing my total profit to close to 3million naira.I have told you my first experience in broiler farming, now let’s dive into how to take care of them via feeding, giving them water and medication.
Day old chicks are very fragile and when treated without appropriate care could heighten the mortality rate. When ordering your day old chicks, make sure you choose the right breed or species because that will determine the level of your profit e.g how long it takes to grow and the weight it will gain in less amount of time. I will advise you to ask the vendor for good breed, that’s what I always do and it works for me, and check the chicks legs and head, if the head and legs are big, congrats, they are good breed. Don’t dare pick or transport them in hot weather (afternoon) this is one of the mistakes farmers make, transport or pick them early in the morning or cool evening. This goes a long way to minimize the mortality rate.
Wash both your feeder and feed dish with detergent to remove germs and sweep and mop the their house with detergent or any disinfectant a day earlier and open the door all day after the disinfectant before you bring the chicks the next day. this is to finish off any germ or bacteria in their house.Imediately you bring them home, don’t give them food! they must be hungry and thirsty, broilers are heavy drinker, always thirsty. Take a glucose and mix it in their water and and give it to them to drink. when the might have drank enough, now give them food with Medicine, according to the vet’s prescriptions.
At early age, always make sure you leave them with light, I mean light with enough heat because their feathers have not grown at that age, between 1 to 3 weeks. At this stage, heat from the light is their source of cover against cold. make sure you cover ever entrance where breeze might enter into their house at night with either sack,nylon or what ever that is ok for you. Feed them frequently to maximize fast growth and healthy broilers with enough weight. In fact feed them even in the night, before you go to bed, make sure you leave them with enough feed that will last them for hours or through the whole night and leave them with light so that they could eat all night.When building the house, make sure that it is secured because of predators like cat , dog, and snake, also make sure soldier ants are not in anyway near to your poultry house, if not, I hate to think what will happen.
From time to time you will leave them to come outside and exercise, this helps them to stay healthy and prevent cripple that comes from fatness. Allow them to walk freely and keep in contact with them to avoid loss and make sure the environment you are leaving them is clean enough to avoid contacting diseases from pecking at dirty materials on the ground, this method works for me, my chicks could move freely no matter how fat they are!.
Follow the vet’s prescriptions in giving them medicine because they are prone to diseases and delayed medication could be dangerous. If there is any one of them that shows any sign of sickness like cough or being too quiet or any symptom of disease, quickly remove it from the rest of the chickens so that others won’t get infected because they are prone to infections.
Clean their house once everyday and sometimes spray disinfectant in their house when they are outside. ( ask your veterinary doctor first) This is to reduce or kill any infection that might have formed from their excretion and the smell of it. give them water always, infact no. stopping.Here is their type of feed. At day old, the type of feed they need at this stage is called Starter feed,this feed is very small and easy for them to eat. sometimes mix it with soyabeans or powdered milk for more protein. This is what I usually do.
After 3 weeks,at this age, they might have grown very much and now have feathers, the type of feed you should be giving them now is called Grower feed, this feed is a little bit bigger than Starter feed and it help them grow taller and very fast.
In the final month of the 3 month, before you take them to the market, Feed them with a feed called Finisher. The finisher feed is their last feed and it is very big in size. It is okay, they can swallow or peck it easily because they are big enough now. One important reason I like finisher feed is that it helps the chickens to gain excess fat and at the same time heavy weight. In the Nigerian market, weight is the main motivator or pricing and buying chicken, so it is very important for them to have enough weight and Finisher feed is the ultimate for that CONCLUSIONIf you follow the instructions above, you won’t have any problem raising broilers and making a killing out of it in profit. Also consult your veterinary doctor anytime you notice wide spread of symptoms of disease, let him or her do what he/her does best. lol.If this article helped you, please share it on the social media

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