A Detailed Guide to the Startup Costs of a Chicken Farm and Waste Treatment Methods

Due to the demand in the chicken meat market, chicken farms are also becoming more and more numerous. What farmers care about most is how much money it takes to start a chicken farm? And how should the resulting waste be treated? Let's take a look together below.

How much money does it take to start a chicken farm

Compared with raising other products, raising chickens has the characteristics of low investment, low risk, and high profit. Before establishing a chicken farm, you need to choose a chicken breed suitable for your own farming. There are many varieties of chickens, roughly divided into native chickens, broilers, pheasants, and so on. Each type of chicken is further subdivided into many varieties, and choosing different chicken breeds also produces different economic benefits for the farm. Comparing broilers and native chickens, the market price of native chickens is 1~2 times that of broilers, or even higher, and their popularity also exceeds that of broiler chicken products. In terms of farming environment, the farming scale of broilers is generally larger than that of native chickens, and it is fully factory-style farming, which is relatively convenient to manage. Therefore, the cost of raising different varieties is also different.

But basically, the investment in starting a chicken farm mainly includes the following aspects:

1. Fixed investment, including the design costs of construction projects, construction costs, renovation costs, as well as equipment costs for purchasing equipment, transportation costs, installation costs, and so on.

2. Working capital: mainly including feed, water and electricity, fuel, immunization drugs, and selecting enough chicken breeds, and so on. Among these, feed costs account for 70~80% of the entire farming investment.

Waste treatment on chicken farms

1. Manure is the main waste on a chicken farm. Making full use of chicken manure can bring relatively good economic benefits, ecological benefits, and social benefits.

1. Use chicken manure as fertilizer. Directly clean out fresh chicken manure, let it dry in the sun, and then transport the chicken manure to farmland for application as base fertilizer for fruit trees, flowers and trees, and grain crops; fresh chicken manure can also be piled up naturally, and composting is one of the most common treatment methods. Chicken manure can also be processed into organic fertilizer.

2. Use chicken manure as feed. Chicken manure is a cheap low-energy protein feed, and chicken manure can be used to replace part of protein feed. After pretreatment such as ensiling, drying, and fermentation, chicken manure can be processed into feed. It can also be used to feed fish, pigs, sheep, and so on, which both makes full use of resources and improves economic benefits.

3. Use chicken manure as an energy source. Manure can be used to produce biogas. A common method is to mix chicken manure with grass or straw in a certain proportion for fermentation, or mix it with the manure of other livestock, and at the same time the waste liquid and waste residue produced after fermentation are very good fertilizer. Both air-dried and wet samples of chicken manure can be burned, and the heat energy produced can be used to generate electricity. The fermentation residue of chicken manure can also be used in multiple stages, which can greatly improve the ecological environment and is a future development trend.

2. Sewage from the chicken farm. The sewage from a chicken farm mainly comes from the wastewater used to wash the chicken coop. If it is allowed to flow freely, the stench will spread everywhere and pollute the environment and groundwater. The basic methods for treating chicken farm sewage include physical treatment, chemical treatment, and biological treatment, and in practice they are combined for systematic treatment.

3. Dead chickens and others

All diseased and dead chickens are harmlessly treated by deep burial or incineration. Waste from hatcheries can also be utilized after harmless treatment. After treatment, infertile eggs, dead embryos, addled eggs, and dead chickens can be added as animal feed; after treatment, eggshells can be made into eggshell powder and used as calcium feed, and can also be processed into fertilizer.

Appendix: Procedures needed to start a chicken farm and the conditions for applying for an Animal Epidemic Prevention Qualification Certificate

1. When farmers build farming facilities, they must go through temporary land use procedures; otherwise, the land management department will treat it as illegal occupation of land.

2. An Animal Epidemic Prevention Qualification Certificate must be obtained.

The conditions for applying for an Animal Epidemic Prevention Qualification Certificate are as follows.

Animal rearing farms shall meet the following animal epidemic prevention conditions (except for scattered raising by farmers' households):

a. The site selection and layout meet animal epidemic prevention requirements, and the production area is separated from the living area;

b. The design and construction of livestock (poultry) houses meet animal epidemic prevention requirements, and lighting, ventilation, and waste and sewage discharge facilities are complete.

c. There are isolation pens for sick animals and harmless treatment facilities and equipment for dead animals, sewage, and waste;

d. There are full-time personnel;

e. Entrances and exits should have isolation and disinfection facilities and equipment;

g. The epidemic prevention system must also be sound.