Teaching Poultry Management Principles

IN T H E preceding article on teaching poultry management (Noles, 1969) some elementary decision making princi-ples were applied to two basic manage-ment problems of the broiler enterprise. After developing the necessary physical and price data for the enterprise, elemen-tary decision-making principles were used to determine the economic use of inputs as the grower sought to determine the age (or weight) to grow broilers under two sets of circumstances. The examples used to il-lustrate the principles have limited prac-tical application since the assumption of independent production by the grower fails to recognize the integrated structure in much of the broiler industry. One should recognize, however, tha t an appre-ciation of these principles are necessary if one is to understand and apply these and other principles to the integrated firm. One should also recognize that these principles have direct application in the turkey industry. The data presented in the earlier article (Noles, 1969) provides the necessary in-formation for the grower who must evalu-ate the economic state of his enterprise. For example, the grower must make de-cisions concerning continued production, expansion of the enterprise and choose among the alternative contracts that are available. The farmer who is anticipating establishing a broiler enterprise woul