How to Improve the Economic Efficiency of Raising Chickens

How to develop a sustainability plan for poultry farming? How can sustainably raised chickens help you reach your financial goals as a production facility or self-sufficient family? And finally, what kind of difference can sustainable poultry farming make for your bottom line?

Sustainable Chicken Farming can be Responsible and Profitable

Getting into the chicken industry can be a rewarding and lucrative experience. You may earn extra money selling eggs, selling fresh meat alongside your produce in a roadside stand, or putting chicken breasts, legs, and wings on family tables. You’ll also enjoy caring for some of the planet’s most beautiful and unique creatures.

What Are Some Sustainable Practices for Chicken Farmers?

With correct management, sustainable chicken farming joins birds with the land and the farm in a way that encourages the good health and well-being of the farm, the land, the humans, and the birds.

Sustainable chicken farming means being responsible for the health and safety of your chickens. Sustainable chicken farmers must be excellent land, water, and feed management stewards. They must also raise birds humanely and justly to promote longevity and profitability.

Here are a few ways you can raise chickens sustainably:

First, Assess Your Goals

Will you be raising chickens as a hobby? Are you hoping to add food to your family’s table? Or do you want to develop a market and create a profitable business? Clearly defining your goals will help you to develop a plan to maintain a sustainable chicken operation.

Extra Space

For various reasons extra space separated from the main chicken house is essential for maintaining a backyard flock. Everyday situations which require different hen houses include when brooding hens need to be separated from egg-laying hens, when cockerels and roosters need to be isolated from female chickens, for quarantining sick birds, training show birds for the exhibitor’s booth, separating new birds in order to gradually introduce them to the flock and pecking order.

Add Income Diversity

When you responsibly diversify with chickens, you will make your farm more sustainable. Not only will you be adding an additional income stream, but you will also provide insurance against underperformance in other areas.

Choose a Housing Method that Makes the Most Sense for Your Chicken Farm

Free-range chickens do not live in chicken cages and have access to natural daylight for at least eight hours daily. They also have at least 1.23 square feet of floor space to nest, perch, and dust bathe.

chickens from roaming freely in open spaces, a run allows chickens to move about in a protected outdoor space. Generally factor in 3 to 6 square feet of run per bird, surely more is always better

Features

Typical Designs

Various types of chicken housesare offered by retailers, including hen houses, chicken coops, chicken arcs, and chicken runs. These types of poultry houses can be permanent or movable.

Often chicken runs are attached to chicken coops. In times when weather or predators hinder

Chicken coops must provide basic protection and shelter with a floor, walls, roof, doors, windows, or vents.

All chicken coops provide roost and chicken nest boxes. Some chicken coops feature poultry drinkers and feedersin the chicken coops. Poultry keepers who feed by hand or feed outdoors may not allocate space for Chicken drinkers and feeders within the chicken coop. Some chicken coops include ramps for the birds’ access to nests, the chicken coop itself, or a variety of other features within the chicken coop.

Pasture-raised poultry chickens have 1.8 square feet of indoor floor space per bird and continuous access to a vegetation-covered outdoor area to roam and forage.

Address Nutrition, Diet, and Feed Cost

You’ll want to consider your birds’ food as part of a sustainable chicken farming plan. Providing them with a balanced diet at the lowest cost possible will positively affect sustainability. You can grow your own food or buy from a reputable producer.

Some farms prefer to ferment chicken feed for nutrition, egg production, and economic purposes. This process is rather simple and involves soaking the food in water before giving it to the chickens.

Use a Chicken Tractor

To integrate your chickens and land in a mutually beneficial and sustainable way, you need to provide fresh pasture to your chickens. For pasture-raised poultry, a mobile poultry house, sometimes called a “chicken tractor,” allows poultry birds to access a particular part of the pasture daily or every few days. This not only provides your chickens with a no-cost food source, but their manure also acts as fertilizer for your land, and you’ll save money on a bedding of chicken coops.

Manage Land and Pastures

Pasturing chickens creates a sustainable cycle that’s good for the land and your flock. Chickens will graze on nearly any type of crop, but if you have the opportunity to plant a pasture for them, include crops that will rotate in production to provide food all year. Chickens will spread their own manure in these pastures, scratching it into the ground and making it even more productive. And what’s more, all that healthy plant growth will help to prevent soil erosion!

An alfalfa field between two cornfields at dusk.

Maintain Dual-Purpose Farmland

Laying hens, meat chickens, and even turkeys and ducks are efficient converters of feed to meat or eggs. That is a great way to turn investment into profit!

When predators kill chickens, that hurts your bottom line. Protect your chickens in housing and fencing that keeps out rats, hawks, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, wolves, weasels, snakes, and any other predators native to your area. A dog to guard your flock can also be a great idea.

Because poultry’s grain can be grown on the land where they’re raised, and chicken farmers only need about three acres to grow enough feed for 1,000 broilers per year, farmers can use the land for dual purposes, increasing profit. Add the fact that chicken litter can be used to fertilize the land that grows the flock’s food, and you have an even more lucrative arrangement.

Keep Your Flock Safe From Predators

You’re making your chicken farm more sustainable whenever you can use something twice or for another purpose for your flock. For instance, you can capture rainwater to keep your flock hydrated, use their manure to fertilize the land that will grow their food, and use their litter as fuel or for fertilizer for other crops.

Purchase Healthy Chicks

Sustainable poultry production also means watching out for your birds’ health. You’ll want to be sure to order baby chicks from a certified hatchery.

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