What is a poultry rearing cycle?
Poultry rearing cycle is the typical time it takes to raise a batch of birds from day-old chick to when they either become ‘spent hen‘ or go to market as a broiler.
Rearing cycles vary in time depending on many factors – including, the breed of bird and your business model.
Why is a poultry rearing cycle important?
Your poultry farm’s rearing cycle sets the tempo or timing for your poultry farm production.
As such it also has a knock-on down effect of gearing all other administrative processes.
Everything from your…
- sales
- purchases
- cash flow expectations
…all skip to the rhythm of your rearing cycle.
When writing your poultry farming project report, consider this factor to be a primary building block of production.
Or sticking with the idea of music,
…the rearing cycle is like each individual piece of music overlapping one upon another which together make a rousing orchestral anthem.
In a phrase, the rearing cycle is:
The critical piece in the puzzle for building your ultimate poultry production engine.
Example poultry rearing cycle
Best practices
Use the recommended timings
Quality commercial breeders will provide highly detailed production profiles for their birds.
This will tell you typically how much growth or eggs laid you can expect to receive within a given time period.
These timings are pretty rock solid and provide predictability.
If your practical results don’t match the theory, it would indicate your flock management is slightly off.
Investigate and correct to keep things ticking as expected.
Don’t forget interruptions
There will be interruptions to the general routine.
National holidays present operational hiccups if you don’t look ahead.
Road closures or logistical roadblocks and bottlenecks also can throw a spanner in the works.
Cleaning time between batches should also be accounted for.
(Usually this is a period of about 2 weeks between batches, which extends the ‘rearing period’.)
Get a reliable supplier
A reliable supplier will help you keep up the tempo of rearing.
Unreliable suppliers can let you down at the most critical moments leaving your profits high and dry.
An experienced breeding partner will keep your production timings in good nick.
Set your profits to this tune
Your deliveries to customers run to your rearing schedule.
This routine dictates your income and profitable cash flows.
Set your expenses to tie in with expected sales orders from successfully reared batches and incoming cash flows.