Greetings to all. I'm starting a poultry business with very limited experience, hoping to attain assistance from fellow small scale poultry farmers. Here's the rough scatch: I have R10 000, enough to buy an egg incubator of 80eggs at R3000, feed starter, grower, and finisher at R2000 and one roaster, five hens at R1500, R3500 to watch the business pety needs. I have a garage for th3 incubator, and a 5 by 5 room for breeding but am plannin to sell day old chicks first now my dilemma is to which kind of chicken to get? Which will be productive in egg production, and produce more of its kind for further egg production. Thank you guys
There's one question I fail to understand, why imports from US to South Africa are cheaper than local aftican brands given oil cost and preservation measures?
I would look into indigenous breeds that mature quickly,are great foragers, disease resistant and can deal with temperature extremes. The boschweld is an interesting prospect. Who are your customers? Are you buying outside eggs to start or just relying in the hens for hatching eggs? It will take about 20 days to accumulate 80 eggs. Hatch rates will decline after 10 days so you will want to either go with a smaller hatch or a staggered hatch. Look at the DIY (do it yourself) incubator section. You can build one for a fraction of a cheap Chinese one that will have less problems.
G’Day from down under DavidAfrica Welcome! Having only 5 x very spoiled, pet bantams who probably do not believe they are poultry, I am not able to help but I did just want to say that I hope you enjoy BYC. There are lots of friendly and very helpful folks here so not only is it overflowing with useful information it is also a great place to make friends and have some fun. Unlike non chicken loving friends, family and colleagues, BYC’ers never tire of stories or pictures that feature our feathered and non feathered friends
