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Before welcoming your birds, you should have the routine energy boosters like glucose handy. You should also have your multivitamins and antibiotics accounted for. These items will make your brooding experience seemless.

Now that we have sorted out the issue of setting up your brooder, as well as the issue of warmth, feeders and drinkers, we shall delve into the nitty gritty of the whole process: BOOKING YOUR DAY OLD CHICKS.

The whole process could come to a sad end if you book your birds from the wrong sources. Yes. You could regret going into this business if you decide to patronize roadside day old chick vendors. You can fall a victim of low quality breeds if you aren't careful.

Whichever state you reside in, there are approved vendors who you can do business with. Find them and place orders for your preferred broiler breed. Most people tend to patronize companies like Agrited, Chikun, Chi, Sayed and a host of many others. This is because Broilers from these companies have proven to give good yeild. Whatever your choice, it's adviced you stick to a breed that gives you the result that you want.

What should be on the floor of your brooder?

Broilers spend a lot of time feeding and squatting down/ lying down. It is very important you provide a good floor surface for them to stay on. Use newspapers or cartons to provide a comfy spot for these birds to stay. Change the floor materials often. Broilers tend to mess up the whole place with poo. It is very important you change the floor materials the moment they become messy, to avoid disease outbreak.

Adequate drinkers and feeders for the specific age category must be provided for the day old chicks. Go for age specific plastic or aluminium feeders. Like I will always advice farmers who consult with me, avoid using tray feeders in your brooder. Most farmers feed their birds for the first 4-5 days using tray feeders. Avoid this. Use the usual round or rectangular feeders that can allow the chicks to feed appropriately.

What exactly should your birds feed on while in the Brooder?

The first 2 weeks of a Broiler's life is the most important and whatever you do, never joke with what they eat within this period. If your target is to sell these birds within 3 weeks, then you should be able to feed them with highly nutritive broiler feed. Between Day 1 and Day 14, your broilers should be on high quality Super Starter Feed. There are a lot of players/companies in the commercial feed subsector. You should look out for the best feeds since you are on targeted production.

For this write-up you should use feed from companies like NewHope, Ultima, Hendrix and so on. These feeds may be expensive, but they give you the benefit of giving your birds the best nutrients to hit appreciable size and weight in the shortest possible time.

With the best feeds, it is possible to get birds as heavy as 700-900 grams or more within 18 days. Remember, you need to sell these birds not later than 21 days old.

It should be noted that your birds must be fed ad-libitum. This means that you must feed your birds round the clock. They must have feed in their feeder at all times until they are sold. Broilers like to nibble on food even at very odd hours. Broilers tend to feed more at night. If you don't feed them at night, you may never hit the adequate size and weight category within 21 days.

There is need to construct your brooder in such a way that it can retain heat/warmth. Yes. Warmth in the brooder is very, very important. Day old chicks are somewhat cold blooded for the first few days of their lives. They need external warmth to stay alive. As much as possible, use materials that can help retain warmth to fabricate the walls of the brooder. Your source of heat can be from your coal pot using charcoal. It could be the gas brooder. It could even be the usual yellow bulbs. It all depends on what you want and can afford.

The bottom line is making sure you provide constant warmth at the appropriate temperature level for the period the birds will be in the brooding room.

Experience has shown me that the survivability of day old chicks tend to increase if they are raised from DAY 1 on a platform that can only be accessed using your hands. We tend to wash our hands more often than our feet or legs, making our hands cleaner, to a large extent, than our feet. When you raise day old chicks on the ground, you have to walk into the brooder, making it very, very easy to spread diseases that can easily kill those young birds. On the flipside, when you raise these birds on a raised platform, you only access the birds using just your hands.
You get the gist now, right?

Most times you should have 100% survivability in the brooder if you follow this method.

What do you actually need to start off?

For the sake of clarity, I will focus on raising just 100 birds for a period of 3 weeks. 100 birds here means 2 cartons of your favorite broiler, which usually contains 51 birds per carton. If you have plans of raising more than 100 birds, these figures will serve as a guide on how to proceed.

Your brooding house or brooder
For a brooder that should accommodate 100 birds for about 12 days, it should measure about 5m X 5m. A floor area of 25 square meters is big enough to keep those 100 birds comfy for atmost 12 days.
Your brooder could be set up on the floor or it could be set up on a platform. For the sake of this write-up, I will advise you set up your brooder on a platform. There're a lot of reasons for this.

If you are considering going into broiler production at this time and you don't have a lot of money to burn, you should consider raising BROODED BIRDS and selling them. That's right. You can actually raise broilers for a period of 2-3 weeks and sell them off. You must not raise and sell mature birds.

Raising birds for this short period of time doesn't cost so much. There is also a huge market for young birds. The big players can focus on raising mature birds while the small-scale famers can focus on selling brooded birds.

It's been a short while. Let's get back to business.

Just yesterday a client who wanted to start off her poultry production gig reached out to me. She complained and screamed at the cost of input for raising these birds. She wanted me to guide her on how and where to start.

Indeed, the cost of raising broilers have hit the high roofs. Most poultry farms have actually shutdown because of high cost of production. Looking at it critically, why won't the cost of feed be high? How many farmers are growing maize, a major content of broiler feed, in Nigeria? Bandits, Herdsmen and other non-state actors have made it almost impossible for farmers to go to their farms and grow crops. This has led to limited production capacity and scarcity, thereby driving the price of these materials up- demand and supply factors will always come into play.

I like to be very practical and feasible. Not everybody have N2,000,000 or more to start a poultry farm or business. Some people have less that N100,000 to kickstart the journey. The question is, is that N100,000 or N50,000 enough to start something? That is the question. I say YES. N50,000 can start you off on a journey that can rake in millions over time. Poultry Production isn't a Ponzi scheme, neither is it a get rich quick kind of business. You can get rich. Yes! You can become quite rich but it does take determination to get there.

It takes time too. Yes. A lot of time, I must say. It actually takes time and patience to hit it. You practically watch these animals grow from day 1 till the day you feel you are ready to make some money out of them. If you are the type that can't be patient, maybe this business isn't for you. Trust me.

Keep an eye on this thread. More to come...

As a consultant, one of the best advice I give budding poultry farmers is to make sure they have the MONEY down before venturing into this business. This business is actually done with money. Yes. You definitely need lots of money if you want to do it big time. You don't also need lots of money if you want to start small and build on whatever amount you have.

The moment you have some money down, the next very important thing you need is the Technical Know-how. You don't just wake up and become a mechanic, do you? You actually need practical knowledge of how an engine works or how to change a tyre or loosen a knot to actually succeed as a mechanic. That's exactly the same way you need to know how livestocks like poultry birds are raised to succeed.

Let's say you are a young guy hustling to put food on the table for yourself and probably for your siblings. Let's also say you are a young and recently married man. You have a wife and possibly a kid, would you consider going into this business? I would say ABSOLUTELY on your behalf.

Let's also say you have recently hit some good money and you need a business to help you build this money up and probably set you up for the foreseeable future. Would this business be a good one? Why not! The more money you have in poultry production, the more money you actually stand to make. This is a FACT.

You don't need a soothsayer to tell you that there aren't a lot of jobs in Nigeria. But must you look for a job? How about you create a job for yourself and others? Wouldn't that be nice? If you decide to venture into poultry farming today, you have succeeded in creating a job for, not just yourself, but also for some other person. Job creation is like a chain- you don't exist in a vacuum. The moment you start off something, you will automatically engage the services of some other person or persons. It's almost inevitable.

As a poultry farmer, most times, what interests you apart from keeping your customers and creating a brand, is making sure you don't lose money. Like in every other business, making money is always THE GOAL. What more reason would drive you into business if not to make money? Just like any other business, if you keep losing money, it will be only a matter of time before you drive yourself out of business.

Like every other business, there is always the very important need to know the ground rules of the business you want to venture into. This is also applicable in Poultry Business. If you wake up someday and decide to start poultry business, you'd probably wake up some other day and find out that you have been kicked out of business. Why? It's simple. You have failed to know the ground rules.

Follow this thread if you have interest in what I am about to dish out.

This thread will focus mainly on Broiler Production. Yes! Broilers! That meaty bird that you like to enjoy every now and then. I will occasionally write on Layers and other poultry birds but my flashlight will be beamed on Broilers most times.

I created this account so as to give practical steps to break into the Poultry Industry in Nigeria. I have seen posts/ threads about poultry production here on Nairaland, but I am yet to see threads that have given hands-on practical approach on how you can raise poultry birds- Broilers, layers and others, without fear of losing your money.

This thread will be updated from time to time. It will be some kind of place where you, as a budding farmer or someone who wants to take a chance in this industry, can go to, to get a tip or two, so as to be on track in whatever activity you are engaged in.

It will be a mixture of Practical as well as Theoritical Steps to keep you in the game.

My name is TheFarmer1. I have been in the poultry business for about 4 years and i am more than willing to give you what you need to succeed in this endeavor.