Zambia Agribusiness Society

A couple of months ago I decided to buy 15 chickens. I wasn’t even thinking about it as a business, but just to have chickens for keeping. I’m sure other people have also done that before. Just doing something for the sake of just doing it. When starting I had very little knowledge about these birds. Little did I know I had purchased exotic and local birds. I would feed them on scraps of food remains as well as number 3 meal. I only realized after some time that the chickens I had purchased do not sit on their eggs and I had a number of eggs that would get rotten due to this fact. Imagine having a number of chickens laying eggs and not having a single chick for over 4 months. So I decided to purchase an incubator and changed my feeding program to village chicken feed and layer Mash. I can testify the incubator has been a serious game changer and opened my eyes to incubation services being a lucrative business. The first time I loaded the incubator it was still empty and only p

Egg cleaning before putting them in an incubator As opposed to natural methods where the hen sits on the eggs, commercial hatcheries customarily rely on artificial incubators. Chicken hatchery business is more than the ordinary raising of chicken. It basically entails the regular production and supply of day old chicks by artificial incubation. There can be variations in the nature of the hatcheries such that it may be part of a breeding farm, an arrangement where day old chicks and parent stocks are produced or where the breeding stock is not maintained but eggs are purchased to produce day old chicks. A vibrant parent stork that supplies the eggs for hatching has to be maintained if eggs are not going to be purchased. Young chicks that are not going to be sold must be considered as well as adult chicken that go broody. Other poultry species such as ducks, turkeys , guinea fowl , quails and pigeons can also be integrated into the hatchery. Planning the Hatchery Licence You