During my Journey in this Poultry business this is what I have discovered to build a sustainable business. I will point out challenges of the business.

First of all I always say start small, use your backyard should you struggle getting the land. [thread]

Most backyard Poultry farmers they get into this business without a stable or a direct market so they depend on the hardcore sales and always hoping they get sales and generate revenue. What I have also discovered is that with that particular market you basically going in blind..

According to my findings based on experience you would need to actually visit/drive to 4 different locations to actually sell Atleast 100 Broilers on a informal market and 80% of the time the informal market they don't talk cash on hand they rather have you put them on your books

To collect at the end of the month. It is no secret that doing that at a small scale helps grow your business because your business grows through word of mouth. With that kind of market you wouldn't want to grow your business to 3000 chickens while you still "hoping" for sales

To avoid heartbreak as a beginner and losing interest on the business of you still have a market like that please stick to your 300 - 500 Chickens. That's why you find some farmers slaughtering chickens once they have reached 6 weeks so they can cut down on feed.

So they do that simply because they failed to reach their revenue target within their specific time frame. So slaughtering chickens what it does? Now you have to sell frozen / cut & cleaned chickens now your selling skills needs to kick in and convince a customer that wants

A live chicken into taking the ready chicken. OK now let's move on into having a smooth sailing market. Again we cannot hide the fact that in order for your chicken business to grow you need to sell your chickens at a low price so they sell quicker so you won't have to feed them

For over the time. So what should you do? Before you could order 1500 chickens first consult with your local Shisanyama business holders and you should know that those guys are currently getting their full chicken between R30 to R35 at 1kg - 1.2kg so you need to beat that

Basically you need to give them a reason why should they buy from you. If you succeed in getting Atleast 5 guys who will order 30 - 50 chickens weekly, you already have a stable and direct market so stick to that market. Selling a chicken for R80 - R100 yes it will make you money

But it will take you longer to grow and start making R100 000 a month consistently. Poultry is a numbers game, it's all about numbers and its all about small profits. With small profits comes with pushing huge numbers. We'll the challenge at the moment is the price feed

The price feed is increasing every year or twice a year now that's where the challenge is at. It's a shame that we don't have an association that will help small farmers like us and fight for us to the feed companies regarding their rediculously over priced feeds

It becomes a challenge for a small holder farmer to sell their chickens at R30 to R35 because of feed price, transportation and this will result in having that particular small holder farmer in 10 years still be regarded as an emerging farmer. My next tweet will be on formal

Market.

Thank you.