Some Trials in Starting a Poultry Business

Poultry farming or raising chickens is one of the most lucrative businesses anyone can ever enter into, since chicken is one of the most common livestock eaten by everybody worldwide. But just like any business, risks and challenges arise every now and then.  Here are a few of those challenges and some tips on how to overcome each one.

High Capital and Long ROI

As a business, raising chickens can be quite expensive, especially if you want to become a good supplier for chickens and eggs, you do need to invest in the business in order for it to flourish. Ensuring that your farm is stocked with complete poultry supplies, so your chicken doesn’t lack is a challenge that many poultry farmers face. So when you start the business, ensure that you have enough capital to keep your business afloat for at least 6 months while you wait for your chickens to grow, lay eggs and be profitable.  If you are just starting out your business, you need to ensure you have enough chickens, so you can’t just go off killing and selling them off, you will need to ensure that you have enough chickens to grow again before killing each of them off.

Diseases and Illnesses

With this thought comes the labor intensive part of poultry farming, because disease outbreaks are usually caused by a dirty and unsanitary environment for the chicken, so you need to insure that the chicken coop and all the places chickens go to are clean and free from any disease causing germs.  Chickens are quite sensitive to changes in their environment and can be prone to diseases when their environment changes suddenly and the thing with chickens is that they also easily get infected, so if one gets the flu, you can be sure that the whole batch will become infected as well. Making sure that this doesn’t happen is also a challenge for poultry farmers.

Poultry Food Costs

If you have a number of chickens, then you should realize that they will need a lot of poultry food as well, so it is important that you find good alternatives to commercial poultry food you can get from poultry supplies store in order to cut down on expenses. Contamination of poultry foods comes also as a challenge to many poultry farmers, especially small time farmers that may not have enough resources to fix such concerns.

In the end, these posted challenges are just that, challenges that you can easily overcome if you are determined and prepared for them.  If raising chickens indeed is something that you desire to pursue, then ensure that you are prepared.  Ensure your chicken coop is clean and disinfected, find good people to help you flourish your business and lastly, find a good poultry supplies shop to supply all your poultry needs, and you are well on your way to a successful poultry business. 

Alternative Chicken Feeds

Yes, if you are raising chickens, then poultry supplies shops will have a variety of feeds that you can easily purchase yet they can heighten your budget for raising chickens as well as having to deal with the lack of calcium in your chickens’ diet. 

There is actually an alternative solution for this, you can feed your chickens crushed eggs shells.  You wouldn’t think that this is possible but indeed it is, chickens generally eat anything and they will surely eat the crushed shells, you can supplement your chickens’ diet with calcium, solving the problem of weak shelled eggs that break easily while saving up a few bucks.

You will need to make sure that you egg shells are clean by rinsing them thoroughly, ensure that any leftover egg is removed and cleaned off from the egg shells.  Once you have rinsed them, put them in a drying dish and let dry for a few hours.  When they are totally dry, you can crush them into bite size pieces, perhaps the size of your grain feed and mix them with the grain you feed your chickens.  The crushed shells will provide your chicken with the necessary calcium they need to provide you with strong shells.  You can easily ‘recycle’ the shells if you eat the eggs your chickens lay, then use that to re-feed them. 

A lot of people are worried that feeding egg shells to their chickens will cause the chickens to start eating their eggs, but this is not the case, if your chickens are provided with enough food and nutrition, they will not become egg eaters.  Actually, this can help solve that particular problem since chickens who lack calcium are the ones who become egg eaters as they will find a source for whatever nutrient they lack. 

 

You should also take into consideration that chickens are naturally protective of their eggs. They will generally try to protect the eggs as much as they can and they will tend to eat damaged or cracked eggs to protect the other eggs from various predators as damaged eggs are more easily detected by predators, perhaps they can smell the egg yolk or sac when the egg is cracked, resulting in the loss of all eggs. It may be a good practice to pick your eggs regularly so you can easily remove any weak eggs in the process and protect not only your eggs but your chicken from predators as well. 

In the end, raising chickens need not be expensive nor hard, all you need is a little ingenuity to get you a long way.  Make sure you pick a good poultry shop to get all your poultry needs once you decide to raise your own chickens. Check out http://www.poultrysupplies.org for the best poultry supplies in your area.

The Pros and Cons of Raising Your Own Chickens

There are a lot of reasons why people want to raise their own chickens as well as there are a lot of reasons not to as well.  Here are some points to consider:

Pros

Low Maintenance

Keeping chickens in your backyard is quite inexpensive, in comparison to a prized dog or cat, taking care of chickens is more affordable mainly because they are not very picky with food.

They Have Yield

Another good thing about raising your own chickens is that they have yield. You can eat them without really feeling icky about it unless of course you keep them as ‘pets’ and learn to love them as such. They also lay eggs which you can either eat yourselves or sell for profit.

They Don’t Need Much Attention

Chickens don’t need much attention, they don’t require much grooming and you don’t need to bring them constantly to the vet for vaccinations and shots.  Just make sure you feed them daily with food from your friendly poultry supplies shop or your leftovers and scrap food and have clean water and you’re good to go. You also don’t need to clean their coops every day, once a week or once every other week is enough depending on how many chickens you are currently handling.

For Pest Control and Your Natural Fertilizers

Aside from the eggs, your chicken’s poop are also natural fertilizers, so surely your plants will grow healthy with chickens around, plus they are natural pest handlers.  Roaming freely they spot worms, bugs and insects and eats them promptly, lessening your insect problems.

Cons

If there are pros then there will be also be cons, here are a few

Not guard dogs

Yes, chickens can cluck and coo but they are really not guard dogs so they won’t tend to bite a stranger or anyone who looks suspicious.

Chickens can be messy

They are not trainable so to speak so they will go wherever they want and poop wherever they want as well, so you might want to take a second look if you don’t like to clean.

All for One, One for all

Generally this is how to describe a coop of chickens, so if one gets sick, everyone get sick as well. So if one chicken gets infected with a flu for example, every chicken in the coop will have the same flu.

In the end raising chickens is your decision. Whether you choose to raise them yourselves or choose to buy your chickens and eggs in the grocery is up to you, but if you do decide to care for them, make sure you know everything you need in order to care for them properly.  Contacting your local poultry supplies store can also help you determine if you can care for your chickens or not. 

Want To Raise Some Chickens?

Are you interested in raising your own chickens? If you are, then there are a few things that you need to know in order to raise your chickens well. You should also find a good poultry supplies store that can supply all your needs in order to raise you chicken. 

Pullets or Cockerels?

Now, when you are raising chicken, you want pullets or the baby hens rather than the cockerels or the baby rooster so that they will lay eggs, roosters won’t for obvious reasons. Secondly, if you are in it for the eggs, then you should take into consideration the number of hens you need to raise in order to get a specific number of eggs.  On average, you need 3 hens to get 2 eggs daily, so a dozen eggs requires 18 chickens. Hens also start to lay eggs at around 4-6 months, but they may start to lay eggs starting spring time for a variety of reasons including temperature and even time of year, so just be patient, they will lay their eggs in time.

Protection From Predators

You should also watch out for raccoons, they are one of the most commons chicken predators, attacking mostly at night and killing a few chickens in their wake. Make sure your chicken coop is secure to ensure protection from such predators.

Your Chicken’s Home

Your chicken yard’s side fences should be at least 6 feet tall but there has been some cases that chickens fly off at that level, so you might want to either go taller or secure your overhead with some light weight netting like that of deer nettings, you can easily purchase that at your favorite poultry supplies store or even your regular D-I-Y shops.  You should also consider putting in some pine shavings on your chicken coop floor. 

You should also consider the space that your chicken needs in order to be properly ventilated. An old garden shed can be converted into a chicken coop, a minimum of 4 square feet per chicken maybe enough though it might be a bit restrictive, if you have the space try going for a larger size to allow your birds more room to move freely. Make sure your chicken coop is free from draft and have proper ventilation. You should also ensure that it is secure from predators. You may also need insulation or heating depending on where you are and the weather conditions in your place.

So, are you ready to raise your chickens? 

Who’s Afraid of the Bird Flu?

A strain of avian flu was discovered in a farm in Scott County, Arkansas, early June, prompting a host of countries including Russia, Turkey, Hong Kong, Japan and lately China, to ban importation of poultry products from the said state, while Mississippi and Georgia followed suit with Mississippi lifting the ban soon after, should poultry supplies go next?

Testing was conducted and it was reported that the incident was isolated to a single farm, quarantine and fumigation still occurred within a 6.2 mile radius. This was done as a precaution as well as the slaughter of around 9,000 chickens to ensure that the incident remains isolated and recent testing showed that there are no new incidents of bird flu within the Scott County and they are deeming it as bird flu free already and as U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, D-Ark. said Arkansas products are safe, nutritious and healthy and he and his family will continue to eat Arkansas poultry to assure the public that their meats are safe for consumption.  The ban is expected to be lifted in most countries and counties by October 24, 90 days after the disinfection and fumigation of the county where the bird flu was detected. 

Chicken is a major food source for many individuals from many countries and it is indeed a shame when disease strikes and you begin to fear eating even the most common food you usually consume on a day to day basis.  Yes indeed, avian or bird flu is not a joking matter as it can cause debilitating illnesses which can take the lives of our loved ones and it is clear that state officials are ensuring that poultry products safe to ingest.  Another thing perhaps to consider is to ensure that each poultry farm or even backyard chicken raisers only get their poultry supplies from reputable suppliers to ensure that the chickens will always be in good health. This will help avoid incidents such as this in the future and we can be certain that the chickens we eat will always be bird flu free.

If you are into raising chickens ensure that they are free from the bird flu, look for the best poultry suppliers, you can hop on over to http://www.poultrysupplies.org/, you can be sure they only carry the best poultry supplies that’s fit for your chicken needs.