The unrecoverable costs of late-stage broiler mortality

As already established, broilers consume feed for growth at an astonishing rate. For every day of rearing that elapses, feed cost is incurred (feed contributing to some 70% of the total cost of rearing). It’s therefore accurate to say that the older the broiler mortality, the more costly to your farm.

In the case of the Cobb 500 broiler, the average bird consumes some 5 kilos of bird feed within 6 weeks of rearing…consider the cost.

Whilst during their first few days of life, broilers are far more vulnerable to environmental threats or diseases, once ‘grown-in’ (so to speak), broilers have a natural robustness that contributes to a typically low mortality rate (below ~0.5 after the 1st week).

However, this, of course, is granted that the flock remains stable. And this will largely be attributed to your farm management.

If managed well, you should rarely see mortalities in older flocks.

That said, if mortalities occur – even a single bird – this represents unrecoverable cost i.e. material and financial loss to your farm business.

In other words, because mortalities don’t make it to the processing plant, but are discarded, all contributing inputs including feed (used up to the date of mortality) must be recorded as loss (i.e. not converted into revenue).

Every day that passes during rearing is one step closer to the 5 kilo lifecycle feed consumption total quoted earlier (therefore making the max loss, whatever your equivalent value of feed is for 5 kilos).

Therefore, through the avoidance of late-stage broiler mortality, your farm securely locks in future revenue and profit.

And given that we should rarely expect mature birds to die during the rearing cycle, if there happens to be a mortality-spike – the management response must be both instant and thorough to prevent multiplication of cases and toppling profits.

Stockmen should carefully walk through the flock multiple times per day, observing behaviour for any early ‘giveaway’ signs of trouble as a preemptive measure.

Flock and profit preservation is for the diligent.