How To Start A Chicken Farm In South Africa

Below is How To Start A Chicken Farm In South Africa

There are two options for entering the poultry business: One is to hatch and sell day-old chicks to the big producers, a second is to buy day-old chicks yourself and grow them, selling their eggs or the chickens themselves as fully-grown chickens.

How much does it cost to start a poultry farm in South Africa?

On average, it could cost you between R20,000 to 50,000 to start your own chicken farm, depending on how big or small you’re starting.

It costs between R38 to R40 to grow a day-old chick to a point of sale, and one box of 100 day-old chicks costs between R850 to R950. For more stories, go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.

Chicken Farming – What you need to Consider to start Chicken a Farming Business in South Africa – Explained: How to Start Farming with Chickens in 6 Steps.

Flooring (Bedding)

Fresh Water

Feed

Monitor your Chickens

Market Research

Aftersale Service

Bedding for Day Old Chicks

Chickens don’t ask much. You need to get the flooring right on day one. Clean the Chicken Coop once a week if you are farming with broilers, also known as meat chickens. You can use wood shavings or sawdust that you can collect at your closest sawmill factory. Watch the video below to see how we did our chicken bedding for the day-old chicks.

Chickens Need Fresh Water.

Chickens are very sensitive birds and fresh water must be available at all times. The larger your chicken coop the harder it gets to supply fresh water to the chickens.

In this video below I demonstrate how we made our own automated chicken waterer with recycled materials. It was an easy and fun little project yet saved us a ton of money if we would have bought them at the Agricultural Shops.

Feeding the Chickens

There are two ways to feed the chickens. Option A – Feed them two to three times per day or Option B let them eat the whole day.

We try our best to make sure that our chickens can walk freely in their coop and our chickens can eat when they want. Chicken feeders can become very expensive and as your business grows into a large scale Chicken Operation feeding becomes harder and more time-consuming.

We feed our chickens Starter for the first 14 days and then mix grower in the starter mix for two days.

For the remainder of their life they will have a grower mix with a finisher at the last week.

Watch this video below to see how we made Chicken Feeders with Recycled Material

Monitor your Chickens.

You need to keep an eye on your chickens at all times. Make sure when you produce your own day-old chickens or when you buy them that they are vaccinated against all diseases like the pocks or New Castle.

When chickens are not healthy, they will show it fast. Remove sick chickens from the coop as soon as possible to avoid spreading sickness and diseases like Flu and Merricks etc.

In this short video, How to Start Farming with Chickens in 6 Steps you can see the growth comparison from one week old to five-week-old chickens