Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Informatics & Applications, Takamatsu, Japan, 2015

A mathematical model to develop raising and harvesting strategies

for chicken production
Peng-Sheng You Yi-Chih Hsieh Ta-Cheng Chen Yung-Cheng Lee
Department of Business Administration, National Chia-Yi University
Email: psyuu@mail.ncyu.edu.tw
Deptartment of Industrial Management, National Formosa University
Email: yhsieh@nfu.edu.tw
Deptartment of Information Management, National Formosa University
Email: tchen@nfu.edu.tw
Department of Security Technology and Management,WuFeng University
Email: yclee@wfu.edu.tw
ABSTRACT
To operate a meat chicken business, chicken farmers must select the appropriate breed of chicken and
determine how many should be raised in each henhouse. This study proposes a non-linear integer programming model to develop a production planning
and harvesting schedule for chicken farmers. Computational results show that the proposed model can help
chicken farmers to deal with the problems of chickenhenhouse assignment, chicken raising and harvesting
thus contribute to improving profit.

suitable time and result in poor revenues. In order

to avoid this situation, it is necessary for chicken
farmers to properly plan production and harvesting. To help chicken farmers to overcome these
problems, this paper investigates chicken production with multi-henhouses and multiple types
of chickens and aims to develop proper production and harvesting schedules to maximize profits
over a given planning period.

KEYWORDS
Production planning, harvesting schedule, non-linear
integer programming

INTRODUCTION

To operate a meat chicken business, chicken

farmers must determine the breed, quantity and
stocking density in each of their henhouses during the planning phase. Because the market demand and sale price of chickens usually fluctuates over time the sales prices between the initiating chicken production and the time when those
chickens are sold to market is usually different.
This phenomenon means that poor chicken production planning may produce products at an un-

ISBN: 978-1-941968-16-1 2015 SDIWC

Related research is mainly focused on production planning for the livestock industry. Stygar and Makulska [1] pointed out that mathematical models are usually used to derive decisions for livestock management and they generally can be divided into optimization ([2, 3])
and simulation approaches ([4, 5]). Literature
mentioned herein mostly deal with the problems
of animal husbandry and the industrys production planning ([6, 7, 8]), but few have dealt with
the production problem for the chicken industry.
This study developed a non-linear integer programming model to investigate the problems of
production planning for chicken farmers raising
a variety of chicken types in a number of different sizing henhouse.

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Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Informatics & Applications, Takamatsu, Japan, 2015

MODEL DESCRIPTION AND ASSUMPTIONS

A chicken farmer runs a farm business raising

K-types of meat chickens in L henhouses. The
farmer buys baby chicken type k at the cost of cbk
dollars per unit. Baby chicken type k should be
weeks before it can be sold
raised at least nmin
k
to market. Bweeks before it can be sold to market. By considering chicken meat quality and the
raising time, chicken type k cannot exceed nmax
k
weeks. Type k chicken requires Ek types of feed.
The unit cost of feed type-e for chicken type k in
week t is assumed to be cekt dollars. Depending
on the breeding age, the amounts of feed is different. The amount of ek kg of feed type-e is required for chicken type k over breeding weeks of
Pe
P
[ e1
j=0 Tjk ]. Chicken type-k eats Ek ,k
j=0 Tjk ,
kg of feed type Ek per week when it reaches the
P k
age of E
j=0 Tjk weeks.
Each henhouse has a farming capacity/limit.
The farming capacity for chicken type k in henhouse ` is m`k . That is the number of type k
`
, cannot exceed
chicken raised in henhouse `, gkt
`
mk . In addition, a new batch of chickens cannot be raised in a henhouse before that henhouse
is cleaned. The time to clean a henhouse is bk
weeks when its previous breeding chicken type is
chicken type k.
Demand for meat chickens are divided into
J markets. Demand for type k chicken in week t
for market j is assumed to be djkt . The sales price
for type k chicken in week t for market j is assumed to be pjkt where p1kt p2kt pJkt .
If the supply is less than demand, we assume that
the farmer will supply the markets according to
the sequence of market-1, market-2, and so on.
The chicken farmer expects to make a T weeks
production plan to maximize its profit. The decision variables and functions are shown as follows.
Function:

`
vkt
: number of chicken type k raised in henhouse ` at the start of period t.

Decision variables:
x`kt : 1 if chicken type k is breeding in henhouse
` in week t and zero otherwise,
`
ykt
: 1 if a batch of chicken type k is started to
raise from week t in henhouse ` and zero
otherwise,
`
zkt
: 1 if chicken type k that is raised in henhouse ` can be harvested in week t and zero
otherwise,
`
gkt : the number of chicken type k that is raised
in henhouse ` from week t,
`
qkt : the cumulative breeding weeks until the
end of week-t for a batch of type k chickens
that are raised in henhouse ` in week-t,
`
okt : the harvest amount of chicken type k from
henhouse ` in period t.
The objective function is composed of sales
revenues, inventory holding cost, purchasing cost
of chickens and cost of feeding food. The total expected profit F is sales revenues minus
purchasing cost of baby chicken minus breeding
cost.
For t = 1, vkt = 0 for all k. For t > 1, the
relationship between the number of chicken type
`
k raised in coop ` in week t, vkt
, and the number
of chicken type k that is raised from week t in
`
, can be expressed as follows.
henhouse `, gkt
`
vkt
= chickens left at period t 1
(1)
+ chickens raised in period t
chickens harvested in peiod t,
k, `, t > 1.

The company will satisfy the market according to the sequence of market 1, market 2,
and so forth. Thus, sjkt is expressed by (2).
L
X

sjkt = min{

o`kt , djkt },

(2)

`=1

In addition, we have the following constraints.

Ikt : the inventory level of chicken type k in
week t,
sjkt : the sales amount of chicken type k in market j in week t,

ISBN: 978-1-941968-16-1 2015 SDIWC

t1
X

K
X

t0 =tb

k0 =1

x`k0 t0

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Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Informatics & Applications, Takamatsu, Japan, 2015
`
(1 yk,t
)bk , k, `, t > bk ,
`
ykt
K
X

= (1

x`k,t1 )x`k,t ,

k, `, t > 1,

x`kt 1, `, t,

k=1
x`kt Big
t1
X

`
, k, `, t,
vkt

(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)

` min
x`kt0 zkt
nk , k, `, t > nmin
k ,(7)

t0 =tnmin
k
t
X

nmax

x`kt0 , k, `, t > nmax

, (8)
k

t0 =tnmax
k
`
`
gk,t
ykt
Big, k, `, t,
`
gk,t
L
X

`
ykt
,

k, `, t,

(10)

`
obk , k, t,
gkt

(11)

`=1
`
zkt
x`kt , k, `, t,
`
vkT
o`kT = 0, k, `,
`
o`kt zkt
Big, k, `, t,
`
`
`
okt vk,t + gkt
, k, `, t,
`
`
`
xkt , ykt , zkt {0, 1},
`
gkt
, o`kt integers.

(9)

(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
(17)

NUMERICAL EXAMPLES

In this section, we will examine the proposed

model by 5 numerical examples. The parameters are obtained from a chicken breeder in Taiwan. This company is mainly breeding and selling guinea fowl and red feather chickens. G
company has five henhouses to breed these two
types of chickens. The raising capacities mlk and
the survival rate for the two types of chickens in
each henhouse, rkl were randomly generated over
[8000,14000] and [0.60,1.00], respectively.
The values of ek were randomly generated
over [0.26,0.82]. The minimum raising time to
breed these two types of chicken to meat chickens is nmin
= 13 weeks. At maturity, both of
k
these two chickens can grow up to 2 to 2.5 Kg.
The maximum breeding time for these two types
of chickens must be no larger than nmax
= 16
k
weeks.
Before a new batch of chickens can be

ISBN: 978-1-941968-16-1 2015 SDIWC

raised in a henhouse, the time to clean the henhouse is one week. The types of feeds for these
two types of chicken are the same. There are
four types of feeds to be used in the breeding process. The first, second, third and fourth types of
feeds are fed in weeks 1-4, weeks 5-8, weeks 912, and weeks 13-16, respectively. Thus, Tek = 4
for e 3 and T4k = 1. In this example, we
set the planning period to 18 weeks. The sales
price per Kg. is set over the range of NTD$201
to NTD$216.
Table 1 shows the computational results.
This table shows that the average profit is
NTD$1,081,616 . In three out of the five problem
instances henhouses 3 and 4 were frequently chosen to breed Guinea fowl chickens and henhouses
1, 2 and 5 were chosen to breed red feather chickens. This means that henhouses 3 and 4 can
produce greater profit by breeding guinea fowl
chicken while henhouses 1, 2 and 5 can breed
Red feather chicken. Below, we show the decisions for henhouse 1 in the test case 1. The
computational results are shown in Tables 2-4. In
this case, we find that no chicken is raised before
week 2. The total bred and the harvest numbers
in henhouses 3 and 4 for Guinea fowl chickens
are 12820 and 12464, respectively. The total and
harvested numbers in henhouses 1, 2 and 5 for
red feather chickens are 7085 and 6830, respectively. The result comes from the model selecting
the henhouses with higher survival rate to breed
chickens.
From Table 2, we find that no chicken is
raised before week 2. Table 4 shows that a batch
of guinea fowl chickens (chicken type 1) has be3
gun to breed at the start of week 3 (y1,3
= 1) and
3
the batch size is g13 = 6000 chickens. This batch
of the chickens were raised during weeks 3 to 18
(x31t = 1 for t = 1 to 18). At the start of week
16, the cumulative breeding weeks for the batch
3
of chickens has reached q1,16
= 13 nmin
= 13
1
weeks.
Table 3 shows that a harvest is made during
weeks 16 to 18. The numbers of chickens harvested during these three weeks are o31,16 = 1850,
o31,17 = 2380 and o31,18 = 1712 chickens, respectively. Table 4 shows that the number of remain-

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Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Informatics & Applications, Takamatsu, Japan, 2015

ing chickens at the start of weeks 3-16, week 17

3
3
and week 18 are v1t
= 6000, v1,17
= 4112 and
3
v1,18 = 1712, respectively. Since all chickens are
harvested at the end of week 18, the henhouse is
cleaned in the next week. Thus, from week 20,
the henhouse can breed a new batch of chickens
again. In addition, the total harvesting amount of
5942 is smaller than the total breeding amount.
The gap is the number of chickens that are not
bred to maturity.

timely production schedule to mtachfit their supply with demand. Due to high computational
complexity, the proposed model cannot be solved
by general commercial software when the problem size such as planning periods and the number of henhouses becomes large. To overcome
this problem, it is helpful to use approximation method or develop efficient computational
approaches to obtain traceable results. These
complicated topics can be explored in future researches.

3
3
Table 1: The values of x3kt , ykt
and gkt

case Henhouse seleted

1 Guinea fowl 3,4
Red feather 1,2,5
2 Guinea fowl 3,4
Red feather 1,2,5
3 Guinea fowl 4,5
Red feather 1,2,3
4 Guinea fowl 3,4
Red feather 1,2,5
5 Guinea fowl 3,4,5
Red feather 1,2
Average

3
gkt
12820
7085
14050
7715
14085
7897
15702
8808
15906
7958

Sales
12464
6830
13552
7276
13387
7693
15562
8281
15665
7678
1,081,616

Profit
943,448
1,074,645
950,475

REFERENCES
1,251,630

3
3
x3kt
gkt
ykt
t 1-2 3 4-18 1-2 3 4-18 1-2 3-18
k=1 0 1 0
0 6000 0
0
1
k=2 0 0 0
0
0
0
0
0

3
and o3kt
Table 3: The values of zkt

3
zkt
o3kt
t 1-15 16-18 1-15 16 17 18
k=1 0
1
0 1850 2380 1712
k=2 0
0
0
0
0
0

3
Table 4: The values of vkt

1-2
0
0

3-16
6000
0

17
4112
0

This research is partially supported by National

Science Council, Taiwan, under grant NSC 1032221-E-415-019.

1,187,884

3
3
and gkt
Table 2: The values of x3kt , ykt

t
k=1
k=2

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

18
1712
0

CONCLUSIONS

This paper proposed a mathematical model to

discuss the problems of chicken production,
specifically when to raise, how many to raise,
when to harvest and how many to harvest for
chicken farmers. The results can be used to supporthelp chicken farmers into selecting proper
henhouses to blreed chickens and make design a

ISBN: 978-1-941968-16-1 2015 SDIWC

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