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Introduction
Looking to start your poultry farm? Or you’ve just recently started. The bad news is that it is very difficult to succeed as a poultry farmer but the good news is that there are many experienced people out there who have experienced the highs and lows of poultry farming but later ended up a success. If you have been following our blog religiously, you may have noticed that I always talk about the fact that it is less expensive to learn from other people’s mistakes than your own. Again, let me be clear here; having a mentor doesn’t necessarily guarantee you success but at least you have quality advice and insights on how to succeed as a poultry farmer.
Reasons to have a mentor
- You avoid unnecessary mistakes: This is an obvious fact many take for granted. As a beginner attempting anything new, be rest assured that you are going to make mistakes. For instance, as a beginner, you may not know that you shouldn’t just allow anyone to enter your farm as they may be carrying deadly pathogens which may wipe out your birds. So let’s examine this scenario, an experienced poultry farmer once lost all of his birds to a disease outbreak and shares with you that when he was inexperienced in the business, he just allowed anyone to his farm so that he could gain validation for the progress he had made and this was a contributing factor to his disaster. Upon hearing this, would you rather just allow anyone to your farm and probably lose GHS 50,000 of investment and start over or you probably just listen to the experienced farmer and save yourself all the trouble. The choice is yours.
- A mentor reassures you: Let’s assume you are into egg-production and you realize that your farm in the first few months, really drains you financially but the problem is you read a blog post by PKOM Bookkeeping that poultry farming is very lucrative. We lied right? Wrong! If you have a mentor who has been into poultry farming I’m pretty sure he’ll tell you that the first few months are pretty difficult and you shouldn’t expect to get any significant profits but keep on pushing because very soon you are going to reap the rewards. Many people have an instant gratification mindset and when they attempt poultry farming without any guidance, they instantly give up when they are faced with a few obstacles.
- A mentor is a highly connected person: A mentor is someone who probably spent years attempting, failing and succeeding in the very field you wish to pursue, therefore, along the way they may have made a lot of friends. Tapping into your mentor’s network is priceless as you could gain access to customers, suppliers and other very valuable people.
Conclusion
Please remember that the first mentor probably didn’t have a mentor but he probably made a lot of disastrous errors before finally succeeding. You could also succeed in your poultry farming endeavour but I hope you can succeed without making unnecessary and costly mistakes which could have been prevented if only you had the right person to guide you.
Pkom 