What does a 50,000-bird broiler farm cost to build?
A capacity-sized budget for a greenfield 50,000-place tunnel-ventilated broiler farm — houses, equipment, site development and owner's cost, with the assumption behind each line stated so it can be challenged.
- 50,000 bird places
- Tunnel-ventilated
- Class-4 planning band
- Assumptions stated
Planning budget for 50,000 broiler places
$1.03M – $1.38M
Expected case $1.15M · effective $22.95 per bird place, all-in.
- Basis: greenfield turnkey construction and equipment, delivered and installed. Excludes land purchase and working capital.
- Layout: 2 houses at 25,000 places each, 15 m wide, 16 birds/m².
- Range: the low case assumes a repeat build on prepared land; the high case assumes a greenfield financing case with a 20% contingency.
- Import charges: carried at 12% of the equipment base — see the landed-cost breakdown for how duty, levies and VAT stack in a real import market.
House schedule — per house
16 birds/m² is used as the working density. Confirm the welfare limit that applies in your jurisdiction before fixing house dimensions — EU broiler rules are expressed in kg/m² live weight, and several markets cap below this figure.
| Usable production area | 1563 m² | Bird-occupied floor at the scenario density. |
|---|---|---|
| Gross floor area | 1628 m² | Includes 4% service and equipment space. |
| Density assumption | 16.0 birds/m² | Buyer input adjusted by scenario — confirm against your jurisdiction's welfare limit. |
| Length @ preferred width | 108.5 m | |
| Indicative tunnel fans | 10 | 48-inch fans derated to 21,250 cfm at ~25 Pa static pressure. Supplier must confirm against a fan performance curve. |
Ventilation sizing — per house
Sized on a 2.5 m/s tunnel air speed through a 15 m × 2.6 m section, with fan capacity derated for working static pressure rather than free-air catalogue figures.
| Cross-section | 39.0 m² | Width × sidewall height — a simplified rectangle, not a surveyed section. |
|---|---|---|
| Tunnel airflow | 97.5 m³/s | 207k cfm |
| Peak airflow required | 206,591 cfm | |
| 48-inch fans (at working pressure) | 10 | Sized on 21,250 cfm/fan at ~25 Pa. Free-air catalogue sizing would show only 9 fans and under-ventilate the house. |
| Engineering confirmation | Required | Final fan count, inlet area and static-pressure design must come from a ventilation engineer using the actual fan curves. |
CAPEX breakdown — expected case
Equipment price is one line of six. The lines below are what a bank or an investment committee expects to see separated in a poultry project budget.
| Equipment & building base | $0.85M | 50,000 places × $17 × 1 country factor |
|---|---|---|
| Freight, duty & clearing | $102k | 12% of base |
| Site development | $128k | 15% of base — road, drainage, water, grid |
| Owner's cost & engineering | $68k | 8% of base — design, PM, commissioning |
| Contingency | $0k | 0% (expected case) |
| Total project CAPEX | $1.15M | Turnkey, excluding land and working capital. Equipment price alone is not total project cost. |
| Per bird place (effective) | $22.95 | All-in, after freight, site works and contingency |
| Planning range (±30%) | $0.80M–$1.49M | Class-4 accuracy band |
| Indicative equity @ 30% | $0.34M | |
| Indicative financing need | $0.80M | Debt sizing only — subject to third-party approval. HatchMatch is not a lender. |
Class-4 planning estimate with a ±30% band, for feasibility and scope definition only. Not a quotation and not investment advice. Firm pricing comes from supplier quotations against a defined scope of supply and a surveyed site.
Climate decides the ventilation and cooling package
A hot-climate site needs full tunnel ventilation with evaporative cooling, higher fan counts and a heavier electrical supply than a temperate site of the same capacity. In a temperate build a share of that spend moves to heating and insulation instead. Cooling only earns its cost where the wet-bulb depression is wide enough to deliver useful temperature drop — a humid tropical coast gets far less from pads than a dry inland site, and specifying pads there wastes both CAPEX and water.
Ground conditions move site development more than equipment does
The site development line covers access road, drainage, levelling, water supply and grid connection. On prepared land near a grid spur it can sit at the bottom of the range; on a sloping or remote plot needing a borehole, a transformer and a generator it can double. This is the single largest source of variance between two farms of identical bird capacity, and it is the line that a supplier equipment quote never contains.
Automation tier is a real choice, not a default
Manual pan feeding with basic controllers and automated feeding lines with full climate control differ substantially per bird place. Higher automation lowers labour and improves flock uniformity, but raises both CAPEX and the maintenance and spares burden. The right tier depends on local labour cost, technician availability and how many cycles per year the site will actually run.
Delivered cost, not equipment price
The equipment base below is at supplier price. Freight, insurance, import duty, levies, VAT, clearing and inland transport are carried in the freight and duty line — and in some markets those charges alone add close to a third to the FOB price. Compare quotes on a delivered-to-site basis or you are comparing different scopes.
Run the numbers for Broiler farm, 50,000 places
Free engineering calculators built for commercial projects. Get a defensible CAPEX, feed and payback estimate first, then request quotes with figures suppliers can price against.