Attention to detail: the key to broiler production

Poultry production has significant challenges, with high input costs and narrow margins being near the top of the list. However, Dale Shepherd, owner of Plaston Chicken Farms in Mpumalanga, has found that meticulous management and keeping a close eye on finances can bring business success. Lindi Botha reports.

- Lindi Botha

When you produce large numbers of chickens on a tight margin, the potential for sudden huge losses, in terms of both birds and money, is a daily reality. Dale Shepherd, owner of Plaston Chicken Farms near White River, is keenly aware of this, which is why he focuses intently on maintaining the birds’ health at all times and keeping a tight rein on input costs in his 800 000-broiler operation.

If anyone knows how to make a poultry farming business work, it’s Shepherd. As the owner of the Banking and Financial Services Campus in Johannesburg, where he facilitates credit and risk management training in financial services, he has accumulated years of knowledge of how to make a business succeed or fail.

He also learnt a valuable lesson when venturing into chicken farming, as his first attempt had a less than favourable outcome.

“I tried to run the farm remotely from Johannesburg, with a farm manager on site,” he recalls. “But I realised very quickly that successful chicken farming requires a hands-on approach.”

DIRECT CONTROL

When Shepherd relocated to Mbombela, Mpumalanga, in 2011, he was offered the opportunity to rent land from a community property association (CPA), which had acquired the property through a land claim. The holding, which comprises two farms, was run-down, so the community was looking for someone who could farm there and from whom they could earn an income through rent.

In the decade since, Shepherd has established nine production houses on the two farms, which hold approximately 135 000 chickens at a time.