Raising chickens in storey building to get truckloads of manure

… prevents diseases, reduces drudgery
Farms that can afford the initial investment of a one-storey building for raising chickens are safeguarding the health of their birds, reducing drudgery and earning additional income from selling the chicken droppings on large scale.

The floor of the upper floor of such a building is built to have parallel rectangular spaces and the battery cages in which the chickens are housed on this top floor are arranged in such a way that the chicken droppings or faeces pass through the spaces to the ground floor.

The droppings would not be cleared and disposed until after one whole year. Noteworthy is that one of the main challenges and complaints of farm hands in the country is the tediousness of having to clear droppings regularly from the poultry pens.

The droppings accumulate on the ground floor, which has no walls but supporting pillars so that the ventilation is much, preventing excessive microbial actions, foul odour and also the distance between the ground floor and top floor prevents the birds from getting disease infections from the accumulated droppings.

At the end of the laying cycle of the birds, about a year later when the layers have been removed from the upper floor, the farm sells the droppings as manure to large scale vegetable farms, mostly those that grow vegetables for export.

One of such farms that do this is Animal Care Farm in Ogun State, South West Nigeria, which also conducts training for poultry farmers on its farming techniques.

This is just one of the many methods being utilised in poultry production within the country. The demand for poultry products has increased by over 20 percent in about three years. Poultry farmers and dealers are also taking advantage of mobile telephones and growing concerns over the contraband poultry products smuggled daily into the country to run thriving businesses selling freshly-slaughtered chickens to consumers.

In some cases, dealers situate kiosks with live chickens near residential areas. Customers either stop by, choose the chickens they want and wait for about 10 minutes for the chickens to get slaughtered and dressed.

In other cases, the customers simply phone the dealer and make orders, stating the time they would pick up the slaughtered and dressed chickens, or if they want the chicken(s) delivered to them. The smuggled imported chickens are still in the market, but the service of slaughtering and dressing the chickens being provided by live chicken sellers near residential areas is fast turning it into brisk business, giving stiff competition to the cheaper, imported/smuggled chickens.