Best Type of Poultry to Raise for Commercial Production and their Time of Maturity

August 18, 2023 Agric4Profits

Often times, Poultry Farmers always ask which of the poultry types is better to raise for commercial production, especially beginners intending to make their first stocking of birds to raise as they often gets confuse with regards to which of the breed of birds is more profitable than the other.

Attempting to answer this question have always been a very difficult issue as you first and foremost try to understand what exactly the farmer or intending farming wants to achieve from raising those intended birds.

Well this depends on your interest, your target market and the fund available at your disposal. Markets for eggs are usually more readily available than those of meat. Also, the cost of raising layers is more than those of Broilers and Cockerels.

Therefore the one you can raise depends on these factors, meanwhile all things being equal then raising layers for egg production seems to be more profitable with good management as the market for eggs are usually available and the birds will at the end of the day be sold as spent layers.

Broilers mature at about 2½ months. After this time, keeping them will no longer be economical therefore no matter how big they become even after 6months, the cost of selling them may not compensate for the cost at which they were produced. So it is better not to raise them beyond 3 months of age.

Cockerels take 5-6months to mature for sale while Pullets (Layers) will start to lay eggs between 18 and 20 weeks of age. All these can only be achieved if they are properly managed.

See also: Introduction to Poultry Farming

But let us look at the requirements for starting poultry farming business below:

Requirements for starting poultry farming

In order to begin poultry farming, there are some certain factors to be considered and these are;

Selection of poultry specialization

The poultry industry is a broad specialization, there are many sub-sectors in the poultry industry in which one could go fully into. When poultry farming is mentioned, most people do misconstrue the meaning, some might just think its chicken rearing or turkey rearing or even geese rearing alone, but poultry farming is a very wide agro business with different sectors. Below are some of the sectors in the poultry business;

Chicken breeding
Meat production
Poultry feed production
Poultry market and consultancy
Egg production

From the sectors of the poultry farming we have above, we can now see that poultry farming is very wide and so an area of specialization has to be chosen.

Selection of Bird

This is also an important factor. Several types of bird can be reared and these are
Domestic fowl
Turkey
Geese
Duck
Peacock
Guinea fowl

There should be an apt decision as to the rearing of chickens which are mainly divided into two the broilers and the layers.
The broilers are the ones being nurtured for meat production while the layers are the one being nurtured for both egg and meat production.

Citing of poultry farm

A good location and housing system is vital to the success of a poultry farm.
A poultry should be sited where there is a large availability of cheap land and closeness to areas with high population density.
Housing systems such as range, straw yard, battery cage and deep litter should also be considered.

Poultry farming equipment and feeding

Construction of house for the birds, provision of feeders and drinkers, an adequate waste disposal system, source of water and don’t also forget that 70% of expenses go into feeding and so feeding aspect must be well figured out before going into poultry business.