Broilers Vs Layers
Broilers vs Layers: Key Differences, Profitability and Production
As of today a lot of poultry farmers get confused on which poultry chickens are more profitable over the other. Some farmers could spend hours on which one is better over the other. This Agribusiness article will take a look at key differences, production techniques and profitability of of these two, and the knowledge gained in this article will help you make a right choice in your poultry farming career. The article will outline the advantages and disadvantages of rearing layers (for eggs) and broilers (for meat).
Broilers vs Layers
1. Marketing
In any poultry farming business marketing should be considered first. As Agribusiness farmer you can not rear chickens for sell while there is no market for your poultry birds. In poultry farming, a lot of people often start poultry farming without knowing how to market the final products and at the end they are forced to sell their chickens at cheap rates which often make them run their poultry farming business at a loss. To avoid failing in the poultry business, you should first know your target market or places where you are going to market your products.
In addition before starting your poultry farming business, you should learn a few marketing skills which will likely bring you a competitive advantages in poultry farming business. As an Agribusiness farmer you should have a practical Knowledge of the poultry market, not theories which will unlikely help you in your poultry business.
When possible, you should acquire marketing knowledge from experienced poultry farmers who have been in poultry farming business for at least 2 years.
If your final choice is to venture into broiler production, you should know where to buy day old chicks at a lower price and where to sell when they will be ready for market. This might require doing a little market research.
Another key issue of concern in broiler farming is failure to find a market for your broilers in their final weeks, this will likely result in a huge loss because at this time, your broiler chickens will be consuming more feeds, yet they could be sold. In business, this means you are making unnecessary losses which you could have avoided by finding a market earlier. This problem can alternatively be eliminated by keeping your slaughtered chickens in a frozen state while waiting for selling.
Layers on the other hand are easier to market as the eggs produced by the chickens can be stored without getting spoilt. However, even though this is the case, you should know that everything has an expiry date, including the layer eggs we are talking about. Thus, the earlier they are consumed the better.
In layer poultry business, layer eggs can be kept for a longer time at no cost and this means you can only sell the eggs when you are willing and you will not get desperate about them. Even though you will be feeding the chickens every day, they will continue laying more eggs which will be available for sell. The only challenge to poultry egg business is a fixed price within your local area. You will likely find similar prices for similar egg sizes.
2. Immunisations Cost
Broiler chickens attain market weight for about 42 days which is equivalent to 6 weeks. Which means they take a short period of time. Taking short period of time for selling them in poultry farming business means you will likely rear many batches of broiler chickens in one year.
Since you will likely rear more batches of broiler chickens within a year, when there is a poultry birds disease outbreak, which is uncertainty in poultry farming, you will lose some chickens and within 3 months, you will likely be back rearing another set of broiler chickens. This is not the case for layers. When there is a disease outbreak in layers and some die, you cannot start another set of layers again immediately, which means you will have to wait for about a year to recover from the loss.
In a situation of disease outbreak, the money you will likely spend on treating layer chickens affected by diseases will be more than for broilers because layers stay longer and hence you will have to spend money to buy their drugs, their vaccines and processes such as debeaking (cutting their beaks to reduce the rate at which they injure one another and also destroy their own eggs and drink it).
Almost everything will likely affect egg production in layer farming: if the feed given to your layers is not enough, they will likely reduce the egg size; Any infection or disease or even the debeaking affects their egg production. Treatment or prevention of chicken diseases by some drugs especially for coccidiosis affects their egg production. In layers we can certainly conclude that you will require a lot of knowledge on diseases and treatment options for layers before you even start.
3. Initial startup cost
Setting a broiler chicken farm cost lower than setting up a layer egg farm. Broiler requires light, clean water, space, few vaccines and food, and within 8 weeks (2months) they will be ready to sell them out and start another batch of broiler chickens, while in layers you will require all the management techniques required in broilers with additional vaccines, debeaking. Layers incur extra cost of feeding for months before the they start laying.
4. Level of skills for starting the Poultry farming
Broilers do not require more knowledge and skills compared to layers production. With a few basic skills, you can set up your broiler farm. This is so, because the broiler chickens need fewer vaccines as they do not stay for a long time as layers.
5. Cost of Feeding
Broiler feeding is more costly than layers as more energy and protein is required for broilers to quickly gain weight before attaining a selling point than it is required by layers. The more the amount of protein content in poultry feed, the costly the feed can get. However, it is easier to start a broiler poultry farm than a layer chicken farm because the initial cost of starting a broiler farm is cheaper and the expertise or skills required are minimal compared to layers that are more complex and costly initially.
6. Long Term Revenue
With more time, layers farming on a large scale will bring in more revenue than broilers because after laying of eggs, the layer chickens can be sold for cash as meat even though at lesser price compared to that of broilers. This means, when the layers grow old and the rate of their feed consumption is higher than the egg production, you should know it is time to sell them out to start another set of layers again. This selling out of old layers can be additional revenue added to the revenue generated from selling of the eggs they had been producing on your farm.
Broilers on the other hand can only generate more revenue than layers when you already have a large market demand that you cannot even satisfy all the demand. This can occur after conducting a market research which aim at finding potential buyers before venturing into broiler production. Finding buyers earlier, will enable you lower feeding cost at a point of sale.
In conclusion, broilers and layers poultry farming are both good and choosing one over the other depends on the factors stated above.