27/08/2021
POULTRY MARKETING LESSON:
The Dynamics of Chicken Marketing and Market
QUESTION:
When is the best time to start selling your chickens?
👉🏼 Before you stock them
👉🏼 Before they mature
👉🏼 After they mature
?
But before I do justice to that above question, let me share some very fundamental ideas to consider if you want to sell-off your chickens with ease.
For the past two days, I have asked poultry farmers very important marketing questions.
And I have read very interesting contributions.
But one thing is clear to me.
Many poultry farmers have no concrete ideas, or let me say; a very clear and well-thought out system in place on how to sell their chickens when they mature.
A vast majority of poultry farmers still stock chickens at day old, feed them for 6-7 weeks or whenever they mature in their eyes, and then start looking for who will buy them.
Well, this was how our fathers and mothers did poultry farming those days…
While they managed to succeed in those days, this method will definitely not give much success today.
The poultry market of today has changed significantly.
It is now much more dynamic and competitive.
That level of profitability which probably is one of the things that attracted you to poultry farming cannot be achieved today with those kind of systems our fathers used in the 80’s and 90’s, up to early 2000’s even.
Today’s poultry market requires an efficient system to succeed.
Whether you are keeping 50 broiler birds or 5000, you need an efficient marketing and sales system to be able to achieve a consistently high profit margin from each batch of your stock.
You can have a 50 Chicken farmer who makes more profit than a 500 chicken farmer.
..and you can have a 5000 chicken farmer sell-out their entire stock, while another farmer with just chickens is suffering glut and unable to sale.
The difference is a system that sells out your chicken each time...
To be able to develop that system, you will need to consider the following QUESTIONS, and then decide which answer is best for you and your business.
How you respond to these questions should be influenced by your peculiar farming and business conditions, and the system you will come up with in the end will be relatively unique to you.
For instance, a system that’ll fit a 50 chicken farmer may not fit a 500 chicken farmer, or a 5000 chicken farmer.
A system that a farmer in the city is happy with may return no result to a farmer in a rural setting
And so on…
So I expect you to consider this question as it’s reasonably possible for your farming and business conditions.
WHO WOULD YOU SELL TO?
Direct consumers, chicken vendors or businesses that use chickens?
HOW WOULD YOU SELL?
As live chicken or dressed chicken?
WHERE WOULD YOU SELL?
At open market? Off-take arrangement? Would you hulk them or sell right from the farm?
WHEN WILL YOU SELL OFF?
At 4, 5, 6 or 10 weeks?
Now these are very important questions that need to be answered by every poultry farmer who desire rapid and consistent sales.
When correctly answered, you would have gone 70% of the journey to developing a marketing and sales system for your business.
Remember there may be other splinter questions that will arise, and when you consider those ones as well thoroughly, it would also affect your final outcome.
For instance, if you choose to sell your chickens as dressed instead of live,
You will also have to consider whether you have the capacity to preserve the product between the time you dress and the time you deliver.
And in case for any reason(s) you are unable to deliver after you must have killed and dressed the chicken;
You will also consider how you will dress the chicken, would you do it yourself or outsource it.
If you will outsource the dressing,
What additional costs are involved?
Who would bear those costs?
You can choose to bear it and build it into the price of the chicken, or let the buyer pay for it.
And if on the other hand you choose to sell as live chicken,
Would you sell per kg or per bird?
In this case, who you are selling to will play a lot of roles in this choice.
And so on…
Your outcome from this small exercise will give you a lot of clarity, and help you formulate a strategy that would help your marketing efforts…
Today’s Poultry farming is a business. It’s no longer an occupation…
And every successful business has a marketing and sales strategy…
In business, nothing happens until a sale is made. And when sales are not made, the business will gradually dies.
But in poultry farming, the situation is even more dare.
You can make sales, and still not be profitable.
This is because, with poultry farming, you have to make sales and make them at the right time.
A lot of farmers are dropping off because of the hike in the costs of poultry inputs, while many others are not making profit, just hanging in there, recycling their capital.
But the REAL UNDERLYING REASON is that they were probably not treating their poultry farming like a business.
It is one thing to know how to get 2.5kg broilers in 6 weeks: POULTRY PRODUCTION
But then it’s another thing to know how to sell those chickens: POULTRY MARKETING
Both are very important for your profitability in poultry business…
But most of the time, famers focus on production and ignore marketing…
Waoo…
This post is already long
So in my next post, I will answer the question
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO START SELLING YOUR CHICKENS?
Meanwhile, feel free to make your contribution.
To your marketing success in poultry farming!!
SES Agro Services-AgroXperts
