Maximizing the Benefits of Buying Ready-to-Lay-Pullets

On today’s edition of SpiceyGist Entrepreneurship Spotlight, an expert in the Poultry Farming business, Abdulazeez Abdulkareem critically appraises “Buying Ready to Lay (Point of Lay) Pullets and Understanding the Competitive Advantages and Opportunities for faster egg production”.

Ready-to-lay pullets, sometimes called point-of-lay, are one of the pastured egg-farmers best competitive advantages. There are lots of profits and opportunities for farmers to save money on replacement pullet costs. It also calls out an unmet demand in the pastured layer community for diversity and quantity of birds.

Point-of-Lay is the phrase used to describe pullets that are approaching the age when they will start laying eggs. How soon they start laying depends on their parent stock as well as the condition of brooding and rearing. Expected laying ranges between 18 to 22 weeks of age. Thus, an early purchase enables the hens to adapt to farm conditions and management practices.

Generally speaking, the advantages of buying point-of-lay pullets are:

1. Competitive cost over raising your own by leveraging commercial scale. Many farmers sell off their old layers and may not be able to raise new ones from day old and as such, will be advised to buy a point of lay immediately they dispose of the old spent layers.

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2. Ready-to-lay pullets were raised with proper nutrition.
To breed a day old is not an easy task, especially, in balancing their nutrition with absolute concentration and vitamins. But for birds to be healthy and good at about 16 weeks, the farmer must have given them a perfect treatment. So, farmers are advised to buy to replace their old stocks or buy for immediately restocking for new farmers.

3. Avoid the risk of disease, distraction, and predation.
Like nutritional balancing, disease outbreak is very common in poultry parlance. A bird at 16 or 17 weeks with healthy qualities must have undergone a rigorous treatment to have survived that stage. Lots of farmers find it very difficult to breed birds to that stage without much outbreak. Buying point of lay is advised for those who fear disease outbreak.

A common question that many pullet dealers get is, “how can you sell started pullets for that price?” The answer is self-evident, but still not believable. The only thing you need to understand is that you, as a direct-marketing farmer, need to raise a lot of birds to compete with the large suppliers and their dealer networks.

This is ideal for farmers who want the birds to be well adapted to their farm environment, as well as ensure the remaining vaccination and medication with trusted veterinary supervision are carried out.

The main advantage of buying hens at the point of lay (besides getting your eggs earlier) is less cost in the feed. The buyer can let the producer grow the bird to egg-producing maturity rather than spending money on nurturing and specialist feed before the birds begin earning their keep.

There is no doubt that there are lots of tangible expertise on rearing birds to point of lay. Today, the challenges associated with brooding and raising baby chicks will be eliminated if a farmer turn to getting point of lay when they are ready. With point of lay, there will be quick turnover, especially, when the chickens are of high quality.

It is cost-effective provided the birds are okay . It saves time and energy.

How to Know Good Point of Lay (POL) Chickens

Buying POL is a risky thing to do. This is because there are some untruthful breeders or sellers who are only after making money and are uninterested with their buyers’ satisfaction. Some fraudulent breeders will intentionally want to cut costs at the detriment of the future laying performance of the chickens.

1. The birds are very active and full of life inside the pen. None is found to be sleeping or isolating herself from the rest of the flock.

2. There are no forms of injuries, swollen heads, combs or wattles, and no discharges from the nostrils or beaks, no ruffled feathers, curled toes, paralysis and lameness. There are no pasty or dirty vents and vent gleet.

3. The birds respond to feeding. When they are served feed, they are happy to eat.

Are you thinking of going into poultry farming in Nigeria? I’m sure you’ve learnt a lot from this page today.

For enquiries in and around Ilorin for healthy point of lay and other poultry consultations, contact AZ poultry consultant on :

Phone : 08062413867
WhatsApp: 08062413867
Email: Abdulazeezabdulrazaq419@gmail.com