Which One Is More Profitable, Broilers, or Layers?

Photo Grid collage image showing a broiler on top and a layer hen at the bottom.

Poultry farming is a very profitable venture in fact, I documented four reasons why this is the case in this post, https://tinyurl.com/y7h6lhuu. There are two main reasons why people choose to rear chickens one being to produce eggs and the other being to produce meat. Usually, chickens reared purposely for the production of eggs are known as layers while those reared for meat are known as broilers. The more profitable of the two will be judged based on the following criteria.

1. Space required: Layers can be reared conveniently using the battery cage system but the same cannot be said of broilers. Even if you can rear broilers using a cage you’ll need a larger one. So this means less space is required to rear layers as compared to the same number of broilers. On this occasion, layers win so Layers 1:0 Broilers.

2. Feed: Because broilers need to make a certain weight in a relatively short period, they need to consume a significant amount of specially prepared feed which is generally more expensive than layer mash. Even though Layers take at least four months before they start laying any eggs they still consume less feed in that period as compared to that consumed by broilers in 2 months. For 200 broilers, you are probably going to spend GH₵ 9,600.00 on feed for two months while for 200 layers, you are going to spend around GH₵ 5,000.00 for the first 4 months. Therefore, layers win this round so Layers 2:0 Broilers.

3. Return on investment: Even though you are likely to spend more on broiler feed, you can recover your investment relatively quickly, since broilers reach market weight after only two months. Let’s assume you sell each of the 200 broilers for GH₵ 90.00 you make a profit of GH₵ 8,400.00 (NB: there are other expenses but in this case, we only considered feed expense of GH₵ 9,600.00) while in that same period, you make nothing from raising layers. Layers 2:1 Broilers.

4. Profit Margins: Remember in point #2 we made a profit of GH₵ 8,400.00 on the sale of broilers. Well, if we consider other expenses apart from the feed, we can further revise the profit down to GH₵ 2,000.00 since total expenses become GH₵ 16,000.00 assuming feed is 60% of all expenses. On the other hand, on average, we can expect 200 layers to bring in a revenue of GH₵ 4,200.00 and expenses of GH₵ 3,800.00 per month hence, bringing a profit of GH₵ 400.00. Even though broilers show an overwhelmingly higher profit rate, it is quite difficult to market as compared to eggs. But I still give this round to broilers. Therefore, final score, Layers 2:2 Broilers.

Conclusion

In my opinion, how one will be profitable over the other, will depend on the particular area, the demand for the products and competition. In Ghana, for instance, the market is flooded with cheap imported chicken making it difficult for local farmers to establish a foothold in the broiler industry while the local egg industry, on the other hand, faces little external competition. Even with this fact, if one properly invests in marketing and packaging, they would be able to sell more broilers so for me, I think a draw is a fair result in this contest.

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