Egg production: Lessons from the beginner to the beginners

MY wife recently started a small egg production unit in our back yard and the practical lessons have been worth sharing and we are learning every day.

The first lesson we learnt was that getting battery cage poultry housing in and around Bulawayo and perhaps in Zimbabwe in general was not easy because these are not readily available and very expensive. A battery cage unit with a capacity of 120 birds will cost anything upwards of US$300.

You would be forgiven to think that this is a sophisticated piece of equipment but low and behold, it’s nothing more than mere compartments made of simple wire and accompanied by lateral PVC pipes for water reticulation!

Why we don’t have a walking shop or even factory where you can just place an order and get these fabricated, beats the mind for a country with so many that like to be identified as engineer so and so!

She had to order these from China via some company that has identified a business gap, and it takes forever for the items to land at your door step, not without problems of missing components! Now it was time to order pullets and these can be delivered within a range of days from two weeks to a month and they were delivered just over a week before the supplier could come and assemble the cage pieces!

The lesson being one has to get his or her ducks in a row before engaging moving parts in a layer production enterprise. The pullets started laying the moments they got home, albeit just a few in the batch. We were already in production and boy were we not ready for it?

The lessons have been coming in fast and very furious for my wife, a beginner in this line of production and perhaps me despite my training in animal production. The second important lesson we picked is that the choice of the production system has its own pros and cons. The battery cage is very suitable for anyone doing back yard production and is constrained on space.

The deep litter system will need a bigger space which may not be available for back yard cottage production.

The battery cage system will also help you identify the pullets which are not producing while in a deep litter system this may not be possible as the birds are mixed in an open space. However, the deep litter system provides the birds with a relaxed environment which is nearer to a natural set up as opposed to the cages which are effectively a prison for the birds.

Another important lesson, we have picked is the importance of record keeping. One has to record every activity done to the enterprise, it could be feed bought, the quantities and cost of it, quantity of eggs picked per day and so on.

Records will provide the direction of the enterprise and these will provide evidence of profit or loss making.

Another critical issue is feeding and feed management. This means one has to buy feed from reputable feed suppliers and fortunately if you buy your pullets from reputable suppliers, they will also sell you proper feed.

The feed is formulated by manufacturers to provide all the nutrients and in right quantities, needed by the birds for them to continue laying. If you use wrong feed your egg production will drop and that is a loss.

The pullets must be fed right quantities as over or under feeding has the same effect, a drop in egg production. A pullet will need between 120g and 140g of feed per day.

Then there is another important lesson, the market. The eggs started dropping the day the pullets came, albeit in small quantities and size but this meant storage and selling has to begin. Storage in terms of containers and trays. You will need containers to store the eggs and the trays for taking to your market.

What and where is your market becomes very important and this needs to be thought through as you may find yourself with a pile of eggs you are not able to sell.

Entrepreneurs will tell you to do market assessment first and perhaps secure the market before you go into production, while motivational speakers will tell you that the most difficult thing to do is to start, just start and the rest will fall into place!

As for which one works I will leave you reader to clear your own path and benefit from experiential learning.