Level 1 — Getting started
Launching your first flock without mistakes
Choosing your production, preparing an open-sided house suited to the Ivorian climate, securing water and equipment, costing your first flock with your own figures, receiving your chicks and getting the first 72 hours right.
- 1Choosing your production: broiler, layer or cockerel?Before buying a single chick, the entrepreneur chooses a trade. Each type of chick is a different trade: a duration, a budget, a customer, a risk. This lesson helps you choose the one that matches your land, your money and your market.9 min read · 5-question quiz
- 2The open-sided house: well oriented, well ventilated, well sizedIn Côte d’Ivoire, most farms work in open-sided houses: low walls, wire mesh, a roof, curtains. It is a good system when it follows a few rules. A badly oriented or overstocked house costs chickens all year round, without anyone knowing why.10 min read · 5-question quiz
- 3Water: the first raw material of poultry farmingA chicken drinks almost twice what it eats. When water is lacking, hot, dirty or badly distributed, the bird eats less, grows less and falls ill. Many “feed problems” are really water problems.8 min read · 5-question quiz
- 4Brooding equipment: heat, brooder guard, feeders, drinkers, litterThe chicks arrive in a house that must already be warm, lit, equipped and ready since the day before. Brooding equipment is not complicated, but everything must be there, clean, in the right place and in sufficient numbers. You do not top up the equipment once the chicks have arrived.10 min read · 5-question quiz
- 5Costing your first flock with your own figuresA flock is costed before it is ordered. Not with a neighbour’s figures or those from a video: with your prices of the day, your poultry house, your buyer. This lesson gives you the method and a calculator that keeps your figures to yourself.12 min read · 5-question quiz
- 6Ordering and receiving your chicksThe day-old chick is fragile for a few hours: those of the journey and the arrival. A properly placed order, a well-kept appointment and a poultry house ready since the day before make the difference between a calm start and a first week of losses.8 min read · 5-question quiz
- 7The first 72 hours: heat, water, feed, observationThe first three days decide the flock. A chick that drinks, eats and sleeps in the warm from the first night becomes an even-growing chicken. A chick that has been cold, thirsty or frightened keeps a delay that nothing fully makes up. This lesson teaches you to read your chicks.10 min read · 5-question quiz
- 8The 10 mistakes of a first flock, and how to avoid themAlmost all first flocks that go wrong do so for the same reasons. They are down neither to luck nor to the quality of the chicks, but to ten known, visible, avoidable mistakes. Knowing them before you start is worth a flock of experience.9 min read · 5-question quiz