Suguna Chicken Farm

So we saw a pretty cool concept in Chennai. A company called Suguna has come up with a way to make a profit as well as help the poor.

It works follows:

• A land owner agrees to set up a chicken raising facility (~2400 sqft) on his/her land. This usually involves building a covered structure with watering and feeding stations for the chickens
• Suguna then agrees to deliver chicks to this landowner. Suguna starts with an 'experiment' of a handful number of chicks and scales up to 2000 chicks if the person shows competence. Suguna provides the chicks as well as the required feed and medicine.
• For the next 6 weeks, the landowner tends to the chickens - feeding them, etc
• After 6 weeks, Suguna picks up the grown chickens and pays the farmer ~Rs 2 per KG of chicken
• The landowner takes the next two weeks to clean up the facility and get it ready for the next batch of chicks

That's it. Suguna gets access to labor and land at village prices, both of which would be much more expensive in the city. The landowner gets a great and regular stream of income. The primary alternative for the land would have been farming which carries with it a great deal of risk in terms of bad weather, disease, etc and doesn't provide as high an income as chicken raising does. Beautiful, isn't it?









Pic 1 & 2: Chicken farm








Pic 3: Feeding station
Pic 4: Chicken feed