Increasing Egg Viability for Food Security through Rural Household Family Laying Hens Business Models

This study was carried out in El-Fayoum and Al-Sharkia provinces, Egypt, and aimed to analyze the business models of Egyptian rural family laying hens and determine their value chain mapping. Two hundred distinct small-scale laying-hen households were randomly chosen from each of the two provinces through a method of stratified random sampling. Each province had 100 households, which were then split up into five districts, each of which had 20 households, and two villages, each of which had 10 households. Direct observation at the farm level and monthly direct interviews utilizing a pretested structured questionnaire were used to gather data. The results indicated that there were three different business models for Egyptian rural families to raise laying hens. These include traditional backyard, micro‐franchising, and microfinancing models. The microfinancing and micro‐franchising model had higher flock size, laying egg, average egg weight, and female weight at the onset compared to the traditional backyard model. During the study period from January to December 2022, the traditional backyard model (70 eggs/local laying-hen) made a net supplemental income from selling eggs 624-1080 LE/hen/period (20.8 and 36 USD) because of improved productivity of 150-260 eggs/improved and exotic laying-hen in micro‐franchising and microfinancing model, respectively. Therefore, for sustainable increasing viability of eggs to meet families' needs and enhanced source of income, traditional backyard laying hen production system must be scaled up to improved business models.