Optical Distortions

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The ODI lenses leads to impairment of vision among the chickens, due to which the cannibalism rate is reduced. Thus, more number of chickens can be kept in a cage. This would result in less number of cages hence less space consumption, also less expenditure over buying the cages. If the ODI lenses are installed, the drawbacks of debeaking are overwhelmed. The chickens are up within a few hours after the lens are installed and neither weight loss nor reduction in egg production was noticed. The debeaked chicken could eat only if the feed in troughs were at least ⅜” deep but in case of chickens with ODI lenses could feed in troughs with depth of 1” as the length of the beaks is not changed. This would lead to a reduction in food consumption and feed savings as the chickens won’t bill much at all. Due to impaired vision, the peck order is not maintained, hence there would be more feeding time for submissive chickens, thus more nourishment leading to an increase in quantity and quality of the eggs produced.

ODI lenses were not considerably experimented with, which made it harder to convince the “independent-minded” farmers about its benefits and more vulnerable towards its acceptance in the market. The actual value of the lenses is greater than its perceived value, since the farmers will be more price sensitive to ODI’s lenses than to debeaking. Most farmers will also be hesitant to adopt the lenses “until they [have] had considerable experience with” it as they will be unfamiliar with the non-industry standard technology. Farmers may also overestimate the switching costs involved given the lack of data on the process currently in the market. Moreover, farmers may be concerned that ODI will abuse its temporary monopoly over them after they have invested in switching. A threat that does not exist with debeaking. Considering the market for ODIs, small farms will be more unwilling to use the product as they are family-owned business which are reluctant to new technologies and changes in business practices. This shall cause the marketing teams to concentrate on the medium and large farms which are focusing on making higher returns. This will be an easy market for the ODI lenses. The product being a new concept in the market, means that it doesn’t have any immediate competition from any of the market giants. This product being patented prevents other companies from entering into market for at least 3 years without consent of ODI. Irrespective of some factors favoring the ease of earning sales, ODI will have to set up regional marketing sites to intensify sales. These intensive sales are the most important factor affecting purchases as farmers will likely have an observable hesitancy towards it. Overall, if ODI can successfully inform and market the value of the lenses to the chicken farmers, it should be able to achieve substantial profitability.