Counting Chickens

On Friday (Happy Independence Day!) we counted and weighed chickens. The purpose of this exercise was to determine the exact egg yield (rate at which chickens are producing eggs) and the homogeneity of the flock. To do this, we needed to chase all of the chickens out of the coop, then count them as we put them back in. Fortunately, Maranatha’s vocational school is right next to the coop, so we had the students help us as a practical exercise (see the young adults in uniform in the background of the above photo).

We counted a total of 1436 chickens (which was harder than you might think). Considering that Fred is collecting roughly 860 eggs per day, that gave us a yield of about 60%. In our visit to Ugachick, the chief veterinarian indicated that we should be getting a yield of at least 75%.

We also weighed a sample of 100 chickens. This was also harder than you might think, given the resources available. To do this, we took each chicken, one at a time, put it in a plastic bag, and weighed it on a hanging scale. Click the video below to watch some of the counting and weighing process.

We found out that the chickens had more variability in weight than we hoped, which is probably contributing to the low yield rate. This is good news and bad news. On the one hand, there’s more heterogeneity than there should be for the flock. But on the other hand, this gives us a very good reason why the yield is as low as it is. Underweight chickens don’t lay eggs, and we determined Maranatha has quite a few underweight chickens. This is probably in part due to poor feed quality for a few weeks when the chickens were first beginning to lay. The feed that is primarily available in Mityana is from small-scale mixers who do not provide the nutritional information of the feed. The feed may even be a slightly different mix from bag to bag. But, the good news is, Fred did some experimenting and changed feeds about 3 weeks ago, resulting in better production.

Maranatha will most likely sell the very underweight chickens for eating, move the slightly underweight to a new coop (currently under construction) where they will be fed more to try to increase their size and laying capabilities, and leave the heavier chickens in the current coop, where they will be less cramped and hopefully happier, resulting in more laying. We’ve done some financial analysis, and if everything goes as planned, we can achieve 75% yield and make the operation profitable.