Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.
Some prominent figures in Ghana who are into poultry farming include Kwabena Darko, Ibrahim Mahama and Mr Beautiful. Now, it is safe to say that these individuals are making tons of cash from poultry farming. Given this, you may ask, “If Mr Beautiful and co can make money from poultry farming, why can’t I do the same? Sure, you can. But here lies the problem – even though you could actually make a lot of money, you are more likely to fail if your sole motivation is to make money. Sounds crazy right? Keep reading to find out why.
So let’s assume you want to start with 1000 birds, you probably need to raise around GH₵ 150,000 to run the farm for the first 8 months. But you must remember that layers will take around 18 weeks before they start laying eggs. This implies that your farm is going to incur expenses for 4 months straight without returning you a dime in revenue.
Furthermore, you’ll only get a small percentage of birds laying eggs in the initial stages coupled with the fact that the eggs may not necessarily be of marketable size. As a result of this, even though revenue may be generated in the first year, it still wouldn’t be enough to cover the expenses of the farm.
Also, you need to know that the birds will not productively lay eggs in perpetuity so at some point in time, you will have no other choice than to bring in a new set of birds to replace the outgoing ones.
Provided you always want to keep your customers happy, you’d want to ensure that your farm can maintain a regular supply of eggs. Because of this, you may decide to purchase an extra set of 1000 day-old chicks right at the end of the first year. Now, with this new purchase, you may require extra funds to expand your structure, purchase more feed, buying more vaccines, etc. Hence for the first two years of running a poultry farm, you are very likely to run at a loss.
By now, you may be thinking, “Why should I invest hundreds of thousands of Ghana cedis into a business which doesn’t guarantee me profit in the first two years?” This is why writing a very good business plan is important because if you did due diligence, you might have found out that depending on the farm’s growth strategy, profit could be made from year 3 onwards and at the end of the 5th year, you might have recovered whatever amount you have invested in the farm.
To conclude, even though, it is highly possible to make money out of poultry farming, if you are not passionate or driven enough (A.K.A money is your only motivation for starting), you are going to give up at the slightest hurdle you are faced with. Even more dangerous is starting a poultry farm without a business plan – this is because you may purchase an unreasonably high number of birds which you may not necessarily have the financial muscle to take care of, therefore in the quest to make more money you, unfortunately, burn through all of your savings.
For more information on how to get a professionally drafted business plan for your poultry farm please contact us.
Pkom 