©Shutterstock Free Range Chickens.
It is such as shame that as of today, many farmers still believe that animal husbandry knowledge alone, is enough for them to succeed as poultry farmers. Don’t get me wrong, treating your birds like sh*t wouldn’t help either – not even if you have a PhD in Business Management. All I’m trying to say is having basic financial skills such as making good revenue and cost projections could very well be the difference between success and failure.
In this article, I will be explaining how you could easily go out of business in just three months due to financial miscalculation.
To explain further, let’s consider this scenario; Akosua might think because she has GH₵ 10,000.00 she can comfortably rear 200 layers because a day-old layer costs GH₵ 7.00 meaning 200 day-old-layers will cost her GH₵ 1,400.00 so GH₵ 8,600.00 will be left. But wait a minute, is her idea feasible? Let’s find out from the photo below.
From the photo, you could deduce that because Akosua already has land and has purchased the day-old chicks, she will need an additional GH₵ 10,750.00 to run the farm for 4 months. But how much does she have left? GH₵ 8,600.00. In this situation, her farm will collapse in only 3 months if she doesn’t raise additional capital. Now, if She had instead ordered for 100 day-old chicks, she would have only needed to raise around GH₵ 6,600 (well within her GH₵ 10,000.00 budget) to run the farm for the first four months until the birds start laying.
So dear reader, will Akosua’s farm fail because she doesn’t know how to raise chicken? Obviously not!
Pkom 