Business plan for breeding laying hens

Breeding chickens for tasty and healthy eggs, as well as dietary meat has been traditional for every village yard in Our Country for centuries. After all, chickens are very unpretentious creatures, capable of finding their own food from early spring until late autumn. The spectacle of any village with chickens swarming in manure or grass is very traditional. With the advent of industrial poultry farms in the cities, the problem with the supply of chicken eggs and a variety of chicken products was also completely solved. But the quality of these products leaves much to be desired. Therefore, fresh, natural eggs from the village have always been and will continue to be in demand, as well as chicken meat, in the cultivation of which special antibiotics and growth accelerators were not used.

For this reason, an increasing number of people are thinking that raising chickens as a business can bring considerable benefits to themselves and others. That’s just a business differs from other activities in that it must bring real benefits to its owner, and the more the better. Is it possible to set up a chicken breeding business and how profitable can it be? These questions will be discussed in detail in the article.

First of all, you need to decide on a specific direction. Business is a serious business, and it is best not to spread yourself on everything, but to choose one direction to start. Applicable to chickens, there can be three of them:

• Breeding laying hens for eggs;
• Breeding broiler chickens for meat;
• Breeding ornamental or purebred chickens for hatching eggs and selling chickens.

There is also such an idea as egg incubation, but it is a completely separate line of business and will not be considered within the framework of this article.

Breeding of laying hens

If you decide to start breeding laying hens for eggs, as a serious business, then, first of all, you will need a piece of land with a house and buildings. Renting land and building a good chicken coop are the most financially costly activities, and are unlikely to pay off soon. Therefore, it would be better to think about such a business for those who already have a house on their land and, preferably, some buildings on it that can be converted into a chicken dwelling. In this case, you will be able to combine business with pleasure, that is, having a constant income from business, at the same time regularly receive natural chicken products for yourself and your family, in the form of eggs and meat.

The choice of breed and conditions of detention

If you decide to start breeding laying hens as a business, you first need to choose the right breed of chickens. You should choose between representatives of egg breeds.

With a chicken coop, you need to understand a little more, because its capacity depends on how many chickens you decide to start your business with. Experts advise not to buy thousands of chickens at once, but try your hand at a small number of chickens, for example, about a hundred. If you like the business, and everything works out, then you can expand the business to almost industrial scale.

But this is possible provided that there is an additional territory fenced from predators for walking chickens. It should adjoin directly to the dwelling of chickens and chickens should have a free hole from the chicken coop, so that in the daytime it is easy to go for walks. Thus, to breed one hundred chickens for eggs, it is necessary that the barn area is 25 square meters. Some use cages for laying hens, but if this is quite acceptable for growing boilers, then walks are necessary for laying hens to feel good and high egg production. In addition, the eggs of chickens that walk a lot in the air will differ in composition from those that sit in cages all the time. After all, this is how chickens are raised in poultry farms. In addition, cells must either be purchased or made independently. And this is an additional waste of money and time.

The chicken coop must be insulated from the inside so that the chickens have the opportunity to rush year-round. The most comfortable temperature regime for them is from -2°С to +25°С.

It is also necessary to equip the chicken coop with feeders and drinkers. But to save money, they are quite easily built on their own from improvised materials: wood, plastic bottles, pipes, etc.

For good egg production, chickens also need sufficient lighting. It is best to provide a combination of natural lighting with artificial. Then you can save a lot on the latter. Chickens need at least 12-13 hour daylight hours.

The room for chickens must be provided with good ventilation. To protect against rodents, the ventilation openings must be closed with reliable gratings. Regular disinfection and cleaning of the chicken coop (once a week) will help keep chickens from a variety of infections. To simplify these procedures, it is desirable to whitewash the walls and ceiling with lime.

Inside the chicken coop at a height of 0,5 meters, you need to install perches, at the rate of 10-15 cm per chicken. It is also necessary to arrange nests in which chickens will rush. You can use ready-made plastic or wooden boxes. For 4-5 hens, on average, one nesting place is needed.

Laying hen business plan

Before starting any business, it is necessary to have a detailed scheme of action. This is especially important for beginners. Below is a detailed business plan for breeding laying hens, which you can read for free.

So, it was decided that for the first time the land and the premises for the chickens were available.

There are three possibilities for breeding chickens for eggs:

• Buying day-old chicks and raising them on your own before laying;
• Buying monthly chickens and growing them on their own until the first eggs appear;
• Purchase of 3-4 month old young chickens.

On average, egg breed chickens begin to lay at 4-5 months. If you plan to get your investment back as quickly as possible, then the latter option will suit you best. But these chickens are not so cheap. Maybe it would be more profitable to buy day old chicks and tinker with raising them to save money? It is only necessary to take into account that the real survival rate of day-old chicks is at best 70-80%.

Below is a table showing all three options for keeping and feeding laying hens up to 5 months old. Prices for feed and poultry are taken as average for Our Country for 2017.

In total, the savings are small, but due to the lower survival rate of day-old chicks, the cost of all three options is approximately the same. Obviously, in order not to bother with growing small chickens, it is better to immediately buy 3-4 month old birds, which, depending on the breed and condition, can be introduced within a month.

Subject to the purchase of hundreds of chickens, the initial investment will be 36 rubles.

In the future, about 65 rubles will be spent on feeding one chicken per month. Of course, in the summer this amount may decrease due to the large amount of pasture, but it is better to make calculations based on the maximum costs than to be disappointed later. To feed a hundred chickens a month will take about 6 rubles.

Within a year after they are introduced, laying hens of a good breed are capable of laying up to 300 eggs each. This figure is based on the molting period, which lasts from one to two months each year, during which the hens do not lay. The average cost of one egg is currently about 7 rubles.

Thus, if we proceed from the fact that each laying hen produces about 25 eggs per month, then the average income from one chicken per month will be 175 rubles. The income from a hundred chickens per month will be 17 rubles. And for the year it will turn out 500 rubles.

If we subtract from 17 rubles the cost of feeding per month, we get 500 thousand rubles. One thousand rubles is deducted for various additional expenses.

In total, it turns out a net profit per month from a hundred chickens – 10 thousand rubles.

For the year it turns out about 120 thousand rubles. If we calculate the profitability of this business, based on the formula for the profitability of production, we can get the following – the purchase costs are added to the maintenance costs. It turns out 36500 + 6500×12 = 114 rubles. In total, in a year all costs paid off and even turned out to be a small plus, that is, the profitability of this business was about 500%.

Broiler breeding

When setting up a business that consists in breeding broiler chickens for meat, there are some peculiarities. First of all, this business has a much faster payback, because the boilers are grown for only two months, after which they are slaughtered for meat products. On the other hand, on average, broiler chickens are more whimsical to the conditions of detention than laying hens, and mortality among chickens in the first days of life can reach 40-50%.

Usually buy day old broilers. The cost of one chicken is approximately 50 rubles. For two months of fattening, one broiler eats about 6,5 kg of special compound feed. If you save on feed and feed the broiler with grain and greens, then there will be no point in growing at all. The broiler will not gain its required weight by two months. A good broiler should weigh about 3 kg by two months, so that the net weight of meat from it will be about 2 kg.

Given the average cost of feed for broilers, it is necessary to spend about 160 rubles for fattening one chicken in two months.

The cost of 1 kg of meat is about 250 rubles. This means that from the sale of one broiler you can get about 500 rubles. At the same time, having invested in it, 210 rubles. In total, you can get about 290 rubles from one broiler chicken. It turns out that when purchasing hundreds of broiler chickens, it is possible to get 29 rubles of net profit from them in two months.

Of course, there are many special preparations and vitamins that help to breed broilers with virtually no losses (up to 95%), but they constitute a considerable additional financial investment. In addition, much depends on the quality of the broiler chickens themselves. It is for these reasons that many are hesitant to get involved in raising broiler chickens as a business, but are happy to raise them for themselves.

Breeding thoroughbred chickens

Among the many ideas associated with breeding chickens, one type of business deserves attention, based on obtaining hatching eggs and chickens from purebred chickens, usually decorative. Of course, it makes sense to do this type of business near large cities, since ornamental birds are usually bought mainly as a hobby or pets. They usually have little association with egg production or breeding for meat. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. For example, Pavlovian chickens, despite their status as the most beautiful chickens in the world, rush quite well and have the most tender, delicious meat. And in the famous Chinese silk chickens, dark-colored meat has so many healing properties that it even cures many diseases.

It is possible to consider, using the example of silk chickens, the possibility of setting up a business on their content. The fact is that, despite their exotic appearance, these chickens do not require any special conditions of detention. They will be quite content with an ordinary chicken coop with the usual conditions for laying hens, which were discussed above.

In feeding, they are also unpretentious and all calculations related to laying hens can be used for Chinese silk hens.

In addition to their delicious and healing meat, silk chickens can also be used for shearing fluff. This procedure can be carried out once a month, getting up to 75 g of fine fluff from each chicken.

Silk hens are also excellent mother hens, so it is possible at first not even to use an incubator to hatch their chickens.

The main data on silk chickens are as follows:

• In a year, one silk hen is capable of laying about 100 eggs;
• A chicken begins to lay on an average of 5 months;
• The live weight of the chicken is about 1 kg, the cockerel weighs about 1,5 kg;
• For a dozen hens, it is necessary to have one rooster;
• The average hatchability of chicks from eggs is about 85-90%;
• Out of a dozen chickens, the ratio of hens and roosters is approximately the same 5×5.

It should only be taken into account that the calculation of the profitability of this business is much more complicated, since both adult birds and chickens, as well as hatching eggs, will be sold.

In addition, the most difficult thing in this business will be finding reliable distribution channels, since the products are very unconventional.

The table below shows the basic calculations for buying, keeping and profiting from silk hens when buying their hatching eggs, day old chicks and adult birds. It should be noted that when buying a hatching egg without the hens themselves, an incubator will be needed.

The potential profit is that 50% of the eggs obtained will be raised to adult birds for sale, and half of the remaining eggs will be sold as hatching and hatching day-old chicks.

Considering that hatchability from eggs is only 85-90%, and the survival rate of young animals is also approximately 90%, the possible profit after a year is approximately the same in all three cases. But in the third case, the amount of initial investment is quite large, especially when buying a large livestock, from 10 individuals. Obviously, this type of business is the most profitable, the problem is only in the matter of marketing.

To summarize

In conclusion, I would like to note that chicken breeding is a fairly profitable business, although the larger the volume, the more difficult it is to comply with environmental standards for keeping chickens. Therefore, the best option would be to create a small mini-farm, with a total number of birds no more than a few hundred heads. With a larger number, the use of hired labor will be required, which will reduce the already low profitability of production. The most profitable business is the breeding of decorative and rare breeds of chickens, but the main obstacle is finding distribution channels for products.