Poultry farming is an interesting and profitable field but there are number of factors that you need to consider before you start with it. You should not just go ahead and invest blindly, instead you must analyze everything in terms of your requirements before you start.
How to begin with poultry farming
You should go to see existing farms and check how they function. No one will allow you to see their farms, for no reason but you can request. There are videos on YouTube published by helpful experienced persons willing to help you. Some of them leave contact details and here is where you can start from. It's always best to compare prices of what you are buying with others, so take your quote from the providers of shelter, cages, feeding machines, watering machines, tanks etc. You will need to invest more for bigger or more of these.
There are different ways for raising your birds depending on the number of birds you are raising. Firstly, you need the shelter, where all of your birds will stay. A 30x100 (width x height) shelter will cost you around Rs 5 Lakhs. Cost of the raw materials will decide what the final cost of the shelter will be. Labour costs are another important factor in developing and maintaining such shelters.
The cages can be single tier or multiple tiers and as the tiers increase so does the cost of your cages. Space for a single chicken will cost around Rs 100, the more chickens you want to keep, the more will be need cage space and hence greater the cost. A 15x30 cage will gave space for 4 chickens and there are cages of different size that you may choose from. There is watering system in the cages with nipples to serve water to chickens.
There is an adjustable feeder through which you can feed chickens of different size. You can lower it for smaller chicks and raise it for bigger chickens. There is an automatic system for collecting eggs. The cages are in a sliding shape so the eggs easily slide out of the cages, hence you get eggs come out clean and shining.
The sliding container for feeding the chicken feed is also important. You can fill your container with chicken feed and then slide it across the feeder to distribute the feed for the chickens. You can slide the trolley from the first cage to the last cage. The trolley is on a mechanical metal wheel which allows the movement. This reduces the labour cost as you don't have to distribute the feed manually.
You will need a water tank which will provide water to the cages through a system of pipes. Its extremely important for giving medicine to the birds. You just add medicine to the water in the tank and all the birds will get the medicines.
Ventilation in the shed is also extremely important. Welded wire mesh is used to make the boundary walls of the shed, so fresh air blows in and out of the shelter unrestricted. It is designed in such a way that predators and other birds don't enter the shelter. Lack of fresh air will cause diseases to the birds hence your shelter must be airy.
Bird cage farming has lots advantages as you need to invest heavily in the beginning but over a longer period it will earn you profits. For 2,000 birds such a system will cost you 2 Lakhs. So, it will cost you around 7-8 lakhs to setup such a system for 2,000 birds. The cost will go up and down depending on the number of birds you want to work with.
