Poultry and duck hatchery

What the business is

A hatchery buys hatching eggs, or takes them from its own parent stock, sets them in an incubator and sells the day-old chicks to farmers. The money is in the chick, not the egg. At Liton Islam's farm in Birganj, Dinajpur on 20 February 2024 a duckling cost Tk 30-35 to produce and sold at Tk 72-75, with about 13,000 ducklings coming out a month; a 300-egg incubator had cost Tk 50,000 and the 6,000 and 12,000 capacity machines Tk 500,000. But the chicken chick market is violently unstable. In Mirsarai, Chattogram a day-old broiler chick was Tk 22-25 in December 2025, Tk 30-40 in January, and Tk 80-85 on 16 February 2026. A year earlier, on 2 July 2025, the same chick was selling at Tk 5-8 against a production cost of Tk 40-42. In Joypurhat on 16 May 2025 a sonali chick cost Tk 18 to make and sold for Tk 5, where shortly before it had returned Tk 3-4 of profit each. The reason is simple: a chick has to be sold the moment it leaves the machine, because it cannot be held. So even slight overproduction collapses the price. The Department of Livestock Services puts 2025-26 egg production at 25.09 billion against demand of 18.55 billion - the whole sector is tilted towards surplus.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• A generator and uninterrupted power. At Bhola's regional duck breeding farm, two hatching machines and the generator have been dead for nearly three years and production has stopped - a generator here is a condition, not a luxury.Equipment
• An incubator or setter-hatcher. From Birganj, Dinajpur (20 February 2024): a 300-chick machine cost Tk 50,000, while building the 6,000 and 12,000 capacity machines cost Tk 500,000 in total. This figure is about two and a half years old.Equipment
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, non-judicial stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type.Licence
• Poultry farm registration and renewal, a service on the Department of Livestock Services' simplified service list, applied for at the upazila livestock office. No fee amount is published. In Mirsarai only 400 of roughly 2,000 farms are registered, so in practice most are outside the system.Licence
• Reading the market. In the Breeders Association president's words, there is no effective mechanism monitoring this sector's production or market, so you have to track the weekly demand-supply gap yourself.Skill
• Holding temperature and humidity, turning the eggs, candling and tracking hatch rate. If the temperature slips on one batch the whole batch is lost, and the money in those eggs does not come back.Skill
• An egg source: your own parent stock or a reliable hatching-egg supplier. The Dinajpur farm keeps its own ducks on a pond beside the house and never has to buy eggs in.Supplier

How the work runs

1. 1First decide which chick you will hatch: broiler, sonali, layer or duck. The cost, price and customer differ completely - sonali costs Tk 18 to make, white broiler Tk 45.
2. 2Secure the buyers before buying the machine. Walk the area and count how many farms are actually running and who they buy from - chicks cannot be stored.
3. 3Choose the incubator size. A 300-egg machine cost about Tk 50,000; the 6,000 and 12,000 capacity machines cost Tk 500,000 to build. Starting small and growing is the safer route.
4. 4Lock down power and a generator. At the government duck breeding farm in Bhola, production has been stopped for three years because the machine and the generator failed - a single hour without power can kill a whole batch.
5. 5Fix the egg supply: keep your own parent stock or buy hatching eggs. Own birds mean no egg purchases, but parent stock carries its own cost and risk.
6. 6Register the farm with the upazila livestock office and ask whether a hatchery needs a separate approval. Take the trade licence from the union parishad or municipality alongside.
7. 7Run on bookings. The Dinajpur hatchery hands over chicks against advance bookings every six days. Without advance bookings, the day the chicks hatch you may end up giving them away.
8. 8Hold the quality. Farmers in Bhola report that of 20 chicks bought in the market, 15-16 die within days. The hatchery whose chicks survive is the one farmers come back to.
9. 9Decide whether to sell vaccinated. When the government set a maximum retail price for day-old chicks it specified 'without vaccine', so vaccinated chicks are priced separately.
10. 10Record the eggs set, chicks hatched and price achieved for every batch. The hatch percentage is the one number that tells you whether the machine and the eggs are right.
11. 11Set money aside for the weeks after Qurbani Eid. Chicken demand falls then and chick prices drop as a matter of routine.

Sources

• Livestock Statistics at a Glance 2025-2026 (হাঁস-মুরগির সংখ্যা এবং ডিমের উৎপাদন ও চাহিদা)

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

• সহজিকৃত সেবার তালিকা — পোল্ট্রি ও ডেইরী খামার রেজিষ্ট্রেশন ও নবায়ন কার্যক্রম

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

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