6 Reasons Broiler Chicken Farms Lose Money
Avoid broiler chicken farming losses: learn how staff, bad partners, poor coops, skipped probiotics, ammonia and stunting can hurt your farm.
Broiler chickens are raised for their meat. With the right methods, the birds put on meat quickly over time. But when the farming practices aren't right, the birds fail to gain. There are also internal factors that can cause a broiler operation to lose money. Before you start a chicken farming business, you need solid knowledge and understanding of broiler chickens, because raising broilers is not as easy as raising kampung chickens (Indonesian free-range native chickens). Watch out for the following things that can hold back your broiler farm or even make it lose money:
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Staff
Your farmhands have a real impact on the broiler operation you run. If you hand your farm over to other people, choose capable staff. Don't let problem farmhands cost you money. Dishonest farmhands can harm your farm by secretly selling chicken feed, mistreating the birds, keeping poor hygiene and so on. If you notice something odd, such as feed running out before it should, it's reasonable to be suspicious of your farmhands. The solution is to install CCTV around the coop. Besides exposing irregularities, CCTV also helps keep the area around your chicken farm secure.
Also read How to Choose the Right Feed for Broiler Chickens
The Wrong Partner
Beginners often partner with companies that supply livestock production inputs, known in Indonesia as sapronak. The goal is to cut the farm's production costs. If you have no experience with these input suppliers, though, you need to be careful and selective so the company doesn't end up causing losses for your farm. A shady company will supply poor-quality inputs: low-grade chicks and bare-minimum feed, which slow the birds' growth and development. To keep this from happening to you, partner only with a company whose benefits are proven.
Low-Quality Coops
Low-quality coops are another reason a chicken farm underperforms. The coop is one of the most important factors in chicken farming, so if the coop system isn't set up properly, the birds can't grow and develop fully. Assess whether your chicken coop meets the standards for its system. If it doesn't, build an ideal coop for your broilers.
No Probiotics
Nutrition isn't the only thing you need to watch on a broiler farm; probiotics also deserve careful attention. Just as people need vitamins, chickens need probiotics to boost their antibodies. These antibodies also help kill harmful bacteria in the digestive tract, which keeps the birds healthier.
Watch Out for Ammonia
Ammonia exposure is one cause of failure in broiler farming. Ammonia is a gas produced when droppings pile up too much in the coop. To keep your birds free of ammonia, you need to clean the coop continuously. Daily and weekly cleaning is believed to protect chickens from ammonia gas, which is harmful to their health.
Stunting Disease
Failure in chicken farming can also come from stunting disease. This disease stunts the chicken's body. As a result, the bird's body develops abnormally and it can't put on as much meat as it should. If you find stunting disease in your flock, separate the affected birds from the healthy ones right away, then treat them further so they can reach a normal size like the rest.
Also read 5 Tips for Starting a Broiler Chicken Farm the Right Way
Those are some of the reasons broiler chicken farms fail and lose money that you need to watch out for. We hope this information helps.
