Efficiency of egg production in different organizational conditions

Abstract

In the past few decades, egg producers have faced numerous difficulties, including reduced egg consumption due to consumer concerns about egg cholesterol content, egg production's adverse environmental effects, a ban of conventional cages for rearing layers etc. Therefore, egg producers in Serbia need to constantly monitor their business efficiency indicators and strive to manage costs. In this study, four farm models were formulated to analyze their production costs and to establish and compare the values of economic efficiency indicators, before and after the transition to an enriched cage system, as well as with and without the possibility to produce and process part of feed components for complete mixtures for layers. According to obtained results, transition to an enriched cage system on the observed farms would cause an increase in total production costs between 5.1 and 5.3% and the purchase of complete mixtures on the market, between 2.3 and 5.8%. Also, anticipated organizational changes would have a negative effect on most economic efficiency indicators, reducing them by 5.2-49.5%, but would also lead to productivity improvement for the farm with the semi-automated production process.