Poultry Farming: Animal Welfare vs. Profitability

Abstract

Poultry farms such as broilers which are for meat consumption and layers that produce eggs is an industry that entails specialized functions operated to gain profits by the ability to plan and control proper animal management. Poultry farming should take into consideration factors that hinder profit such as animal cruelty. Proper welfare and management should be imposed to realize better production and profitability. Ensuring fast and efficient production of quality products such as chicken meat and eggs can be obtained by controlling the spread of diseases, maintaining the level of feed-in terms of its efficiency, proper segregation and handling of poultry wastes and proper cleaning and sanitizing of the cages of chickens. When animals like humans when not stressed can be more productive and may perform better. Stocking density and designed cages for every kind of chicken breed are also very important factors and have crucial implications in the chicken industry. Poultry farms are potentially profitable as a business and this is feasible due to less turnover of poultry flocks mortality and high demand in the market. The purpose of this study is to provide information about poultry farm welfare and how it can affect the production and its profit. Various researches, secondary data, and journals were analysed to gain insights to help in the understanding of the ethical responsibilities of poultry farm producers to its consumers by providing quality products while considering profitability. The importance of this research is to understand the beneficial and environmental effects of animal welfare on its consumers and surroundings. This will be beneficial to the farmers to understand animal welfare on what is the proper way of rearing animals and avoiding any kind of diseases and the effective way of waste management while earning a better income.