Poultry breeder
Also called poultry rearer, chicken breeder, poultry specialist
Poultry breeders oversee the production and day-to-day care of poultry. They maintain the health and welfare of poultry.
What you'd do
Poultry producers · ILO- Monitoring market activity, planning and coordinating production accordingly, maintaining and evaluating records of farming activities
- Growing and purchasing feed and other supplies needed to maintain appropriate nutritional levels and condition of poultry
- Monitoring and examining poultry to detect illness, injury, or disease and to check physical condition, such as rate of weight gain, and removing weak, ill and dead poultry from flock
- Mixing feed and feed additives and filling feed and water containers
- Vaccinating poultry via drinking water, injection or dusting of air
- Collecting and storing eggs and packaging them for sale or delivery to market
- Determining sex of chicks and facilitating breeding, artificial insemination and hatching of eggs
- Renting or investing in, and maintaining and cleaning, farm buildings, machinery, equipment and structures
- Slaughtering and dressing poultry for sale or delivery to market
- Storing and carrying out some processing of produce
- Arranging the sale, purchase and transportation stock, produce and supplies
- Training and supervising workers in poultry production procedures, maintenance duties and health and safety precautions, and hiring and discharging workers and contractors
- Mostly outdoors
- A mix of sitting and standing
- Some contact with people
- Good freedom to decide
- Usually under 40 hours a week
- Few deadlines
- Varied tasks, little repetition
Will there be jobs?
Limited prospectsFewer jobs than in most work will need filling by 2035.
Solid: measured. Dashed: forecast.
More people will leave this work than new people are needed.
What does it pay?
Below averagePay depends a lot on the country: from about €700 a month (Bulgaria) to €4,500 (Denmark), before tax.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see typical pay there, for people under 30, and compared with all jobs.
Among skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers in the EU, women earn 16% more per hour than men. Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers · Eurostat
What do I need to study?
Upper secondary or vocationalUpper secondary or vocational training in crop and livestock production is the usual route.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see where to study and the official course finders.
Will AI change it?
Very littleAI could help with only small parts of the tasks.
Average task score 0.19 on a scale from 0 (AI can't do it) to 1 (AI could do it fully).
See the score for each of the 12 tasks
Based on what AI could technically do when assessed in 2025. It is not a forecast for a future year, and not a forecast of job losses. Scores for poultry producers. Source: ILO (2025), adapted (credits).