Start where a real farmer started: R65,000. The measured path reaches R108,000 a year — a living. Put your own numbers in and watch yours.
How to use this page:1. Pick a real story below — a measured farm.2. Say who buys from you — the buyer sets the price.3. Move the sliders until they are your numbers.4. The big card answers: will this pay? The money bar shows where every rand goes.
Start from a real story
Real farms, measured. Pick one and the whole page becomes that farm — then make it yours.
First: who will buy from you?
The buyer sets the price before anything else moves — measured prices and the risks of each channel sit right here.
The growth path — each bar is one batch; the money it makes buys the next
Your numbers
Only a few of these really move the answer: what you sell for, how many birds, how many die. The rest is fine-tuning — open it when you are ready.
Where the money goes — every rand, in one bar
Follow the green: what stays with you. The table under the bar carries every number's source.
How the maths thinks
The float — what is left of your money after the house and its needs. The float buys birds; the house never gets sold to buy feed.
One rule runs the growth path: never run a batch you cannot re-run. After a batch sells, the float must hold that batch's cost again — that is the reserve that survives a bad cycle. The first batch is the one gamble you are allowed.
Your pay — a batch slot lasts 12 ÷ (batches a year) months, rest weeks included. Your monthly pay counts in every total for that whole slot. Layers: your pay comes off the year, monthly × 12.
Year 1 vs a settled year — the big card shows year 1: the batches your float can actually fund while it grows. The story cards show a settled year at that farm's full size. That is why a story card can read higher than your year 1.
Break-even price — your floor. Sell below it and every sale deepens the hole, no matter the size.
Living income — R107,885 a year for a household in this region (2025 study). That is the finish line every number here is measured against.
Nothing here is a promise. The measured numbers carry their study's name; the rest is modelled and labelled as such.
What you need to start
What you buy once (the setup)
The house — 4m × 3m for 500 birds, 6m × 4m for 1,000. Wood or mud-brick walls, corrugated iron roof, solid floor.
Feeders and drinkers — tube feeders and bell drinkers sized to the flock.
The brooder — heat for the chicks' first two weeks. Get it right and only 4 in every 100 die. Get it wrong and 15 die.
Where to buy chicks
Hatcheries sell a day-old chick for about R13.50. Farm co-ops (Senwes, Afgri, the feed shop in town) sell feed and chicks too. Ask your extension officer who delivers to your area.
Where to sell
Live birds to neighbours, at pension points, taxi ranks — R80–100 each. The best-paying road, and the first to fill.
Slaughtered to butcheries — adds ~R4/bird slaughter cost.
Leave the abattoir until you deliver 1,000+ birds a batch — under that, their price loses you money.
How a cycle works (42 days + 1 week rest)
Day 0: buy the chicks, straight into the warm brooder (33°C on day 1; drop one degree every two days).
Days 1–14: starter feed. Watch the temperature — cold chicks pile up and die. Week-1 heat is the #1 killer.
Days 15–35: grower feed, move to the main house.
Days 36–42: finisher feed; birds reach ~2.4 kg live.
Day 42: sell. Every extra day a mature bird stands around, it eats R2–3 of feed and earns nothing.
Week 7: clean the house, rest it, buy the next batch.
What kills birds
Heat stress in week 1 — the single biggest killer. Get the brooder right.
Bird flu (HPAI) — no smallholder vaccine yet; biosecurity only. The 2023 outbreak killed 10 million birds nationally.
The three rules that keep the wheel turning
Never roll 100% into the next batch. Hold one batch's cost as reserve — it's what lets you restock after a bad cycle instead of exiting.
Sell fast. Every week a mature bird waits, it eats R15–20 of your margin. The live-bird channel rewards cash at maturity.
Start small, grow with the float. Begin with what your money funds, not what your house holds.
Words used here, and where every number comes from
Cycle / batch — one grow-out: buy day-old chicks, raise them ~6 weeks, sell them all. 4–7 per year.
Mortality — the share of chicks that die before sale: the gap between bought and sold.
Cull / spent hen — a layer at the end of her laying year, sold for meat.
Break-even price — the sale price at which a batch pays exactly its own costs. Below it, every sale deepens the loss, at any size.
Living income — what a household needs per year for a decent life (food, housing, school, transport, a cushion): R107,885 in this region (2025 study).
Returns to scale — growing bigger raises output more than proportionally; measured 1.68 in Limpopo.
Claim status — measured (a study's field data) · official model budget (a government costed plan) · modelled (a study's calculations) · assumed (our estimate between measured anchors).
SMAT broiler baseline 2020 — NAMC (the government's agricultural-marketing council); survey of 64 smallholder broiler farmers in 8 provinces. measured
Enterprise budget: Broilers — Elsenburg (Western Cape agriculture department); 1,500-bird free-range flock plan, updated Sep 2024. official model budget
Land Bank Livestock Enterprise Budget 2026 — broiler 10,500-bird system; layers 20,160 flock. official model budget
Thaba Nchu scenario costing — Mathinya et al., Wageningen & Free State universities, 2025. modelled (labour excluded)
Mulaudzi 2015 — Univ. of Limpopo; 94 of 311 rural sellers surveyed. measured
Louw, Davids & Scheltema 2017 — Development Southern Africa; the live-bird premium and ~10,000-bird ceiling. measured
Egg industry annual report 2023 — SAPA (the poultry industry association). industry-reported
Small-farmer survey 4Q2018 — SAPA's smallholder panel; R11.67/doz vs R28.34 retail. industry survey (last public issue)
Household egg production — MacGregor & Kock, animal-science proceedings 2012; 4,000+ home units since 1992. verified
Mopani broiler study 2016 — Oluwatayo, Machethe & Senyolo; 86 farmers; returns to scale 1.68. measured
Model output, not a promise. Every preset is band-checked against its source's measured range before this page is generated. Offline single file; no data leaves this page.