Handing over and delegating: from farmer to farm manager, training a manager
As long as the owner weighs the chickens himself, counts the bags himself and sells every flock himself, the farm is worth what he is worth, and it stops the day he stops. Going from farmer to farm manager means accepting that the farm runs without you, first for a week, then for a flock, then for a year. This is not done by "trusting": it is done with a written table saying who decides what and how far, a manager trained over three flocks, five indicators checked every week, and a three-year handover calendar. This lesson gives the method; it is the last skill of the farm manager, and the one that gives all the others their value.
14 min read · 5-question quiz at the end
By Abdul Hussein ChoumanFounder of NEXTEKCI · Agnibilékrou hatchery since 2006This lesson is part of Farm manager: finance, growth, succession specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.
As long as the owner weighs the chickens himself, counts the bags himself and sells every flock himself, the farm is worth what he is worth, and it stops the day he stops. Going from farmer to farm manager means accepting that the farm runs without you, first for a week, then for a flock, then for a year. This is not done by "trusting": it is done with a written table saying who decides what and how far, a manager trained over three flocks, five indicators checked every week, and a three-year handover calendar. This lesson gives the method; it is the last skill of the farm manager, and the one that gives all the others their value.
- ✓Tell apart executing, deciding within a limit and deciding while reporting, and know what the owner never delegates
- ✓Write the farm's delegation table with limits in units and percentages
- ✓Train a manager over three flocks and check him with five weekly indicators
- ✓Prepare the handover of the farm to a child, an associate or a successor on a three-year calendar
- Delegating: handing over execution, keeping decision and control
- The delegation table: who decides what, how far, and who knows
- Training a manager over three flocks
- Handing over: the farm must be worth something without you
- The signs that delegation holds, and those that it does not
- Going further
- •Three levels: executing, deciding within a limit, deciding and reporting; never delegated: cash and thresholds, loans, key people, important contracts, houses.
- •Posted delegation table: running the flocks to the manager; feed up to 70 bags and within the contract; payments up to 1 unit per month in the first year (1% of turnover), then 4; sale never below full cost without the owner; area veterinarian without waiting.
- •Manager trained over three flocks: he watches, he does under the owner's eye, he does alone; five Monday indicators: FCR ≤ 1.85 (alert 1.90), mortality ≤ 6% (alert 7), days of feed ≥ 60 (alert 45), zero cash gap, ≥ 90% of kilos within the window.
- •A manager adds 3 units of fixed costs (profit 10 → 7 with the farm unchanged, threshold 8.5 → 11.3 flocks) and gives the owner time back: fourth house, customer contracts, failed flocks avoided.
- •Hand over over three years: papers, accounts, contracts, know-how, relationships, team; a successor only pays for the profit that holds without the owner (6.6 units out of 10 if the FCR rises by 0.10 in his absence).