How I Started My Backyard Poultry Farm: Purchase of Battery Cage

So today I will be talking about how I started my poultry farm here in Lagos Nigeria. I live in a house with relatively spacous compound. This is my second post, you need to read my first post in order to understand why we are here.

But since I am not the landlord, I needed to ask for consent from my landlord. It should be noted that my landlord is a very cool and understanding one. I can say he is one in a million landlords in Lagos.

After spending about 15 minutes making him understand what I wanted to do and trying to convince him that my birds won't liter the compound and I'll try as much as I can to curtail the smell, he gave me the go ahead.

Hurray!!! I was happy.

Note that before then, I have done some calculations on what to buy and how I'd want the coop to look like. I did some estimate and decided to continue my quest to becoming a small scale poultry farmer. More of what I bought and how it all went down will be my next post.

So, because I don't own the space, I was very careful of the portion my coop will occupy so I won't use my own to disturb others. And couple with other tenants who have loads around the spot I wanted to use, I needed to make use of the little space I was able to create judiciously.

And as a busy somebody, I'd prefer a kind of system that won't need a lot of my time. So I searched online for a good poultry housing system and I came across one that hooked my interest and that was battery cage system.

This was why I sorted for a battery cage.

Mistake Number 1

One mistake I made while choosing the cage is that I should have gone for a H-type battery cage. But unfortunately I wasn't aware that type of cage exist. It is only the A-type battery cage that I saw then.

So, because I don't have enough space, I would have gone for the H-type battery cage which manage space very well and I'll be able to house 240 birds in my current coop. But unfortunately, I could only house 60 birds.

Even with the A-type battery cage that I decided to buy, I discover that it will be too wide for the space I had.

What I Did

There was this company I saw on JiJi selling poultry battery cages and they are very close to me.

I had to speak with the MD of the company making the battery cage to please make half of the cage for me. That is, only one side.

The company wanted to sell the full cage with a capacity of 120 birds for N85,000. After a lot of negotiations, they accepted N42,000 from me for the half cage, which he instructed one of his boys to construct for me.

Below is the cage at their workshop;

They delivered the half battery cage to me same day I ordered. No disappointment.

From their workshop to my place is about an hour drive, it was delivered around 6pm and it cost me N5,000 for the delivery.

Below is the cage in my compound;

I couldn't find the picture for the one I snapped the day it was delivered.

That is how I bought a half A-type battery cage with a capacity of housing 60 birds.

Mistake Number 2

I thought to myself... with this 60 birds capacity cage I can buy and stock 60 layer chickens that will produce 60 eggs for me (2 crates of egg).

My mistake, which I later realised 3 weeks into the business, is that 60 layers may not lay 60 eggs daily. Poor me was expecting a 100% production rate :) But I continued with the process anyways as I have no choice. I was just sad that I won't be able to pick 2 crates of egg every day.

So this was my second step towards starting a small scale poultry farming in my backyard.

If you like what you just read, kindly share so as to help others who wanted to venture into the egg production business in Nigeria. Have some questions? Feel free to ask using the comment box below.