Poultry farming in kenya - A success story

In Kenya, the story of the poultry industry is one that is full of many successes. There is a billionaire poultry farmer in Kenya who has built up an entire value chain around the poultry industry
including factories for manufacturing feeds, processing poultry, incubation facilities, eggs and poultry supermarkets and which employees thousands of Kenyans.

Simple poultry house

 There are also many poultry millionaires and “thousandnaires” in Kenya who have been able to
build good cash flows and revenue streams from poultry farming. First, here is a brief overview of some of the most successful poultry companies in Kenya.

1.Brade Gate Poultry Industries
-Started by Dr. Thuo Mathenge, these are a group of companies
that are active in the entire poultry value chain in Kenya. The
company was established in 2011 to help transform the poultry
industry in Kenya and also take it to the next level. Today, the
group runs a series of companies including a breeding farm, a plant
for hatching chicks, a chicken processing plant as well as a feed
mill where quality commercial poultry feeds are manufactured.

-Brade Gate Poultry Industry also runs a supermarket where
farmers can purchase all their poultry related materials such as
the equipment, poultry feeds as well as information on poultry
farming. Through its Chicken Republic brand, the company supplies
quality poultry products locally, regionally and internationally to
diverse clientele. This is a company that is generating billions of
shillings through poultry farming. The company even has a hotel
where it serves some of the finest chicken tastes from the
Brade Gate Poultry Industries.

2.Breedtech
-This is one of the largest if not the largest poultry farm in
Western Kenya. The company is situated in Trans Nzoia County,
some 20km from Kitale town and is mainly involved in the breeding
of the indigenous Kienyeji chicken in order to come up with better
chicken breeds. The proprietor, Dr. Mwangale, has spent many
years in poultry consultancy and established his indigenous poultry
breeding farm after seven years of breeding research.

-Today the company is one of the largest suppliers of fertilized
eggs to hatcheries and chicks to farmers in the Western and the
Nyanza region. The company also trains farmers in the Nyanza and
Western region in improved poultry farming techniques that will
lead to an improvement in the yields.

3.Kukuchic
-Based in Eldoret, Kukuchic is the leading producer of the breeder
as well as supplier of the Rainbow Rooster birds and the Fast
White Rainbow chicks in East Africa. The company has a hatchery
and three breeder farms in Eldoret. It has more than 20,000
parent stock of the Rainbow Rooster.

-The company has a massive
hatchery with a capacity of 240,000 chicks per month. KukuChic
has also ventured cross-border in Uganda where it has established
a hatchery and a breeder farm. Its latest investment are the
poultry feed mills which it is now constructing and which it hopes
will help farmers lower their cost of production through high quality
but lower costs poultry feeds.

4.Wendy Farms
-Caleb Karuga’s story has been widely publicized in both the local
and international media. He quit his media career and ventured into
poultry farming, particularly of the kienyeji breed. After a few
years of hard work, he now runs a multi-million shilling poultry farm
in Kiambu, Wendy Farms, where he rears kienyeji chicken but also
does large scale hatching of chicks.

-But that is just one part of the poultry farming in Kenya. The
other successes are in the thousands of Kenyans who start with
as little as Ksh.5000 and go on to build successful poultry farming
that earns them incomes of as much as Ksh.100,000 per month in
just a few years.

-Many Kenyans from all over the country have seen the great
potential of poultry farming in Kenya. They are no longer raising
chickens just for Christmas and Easter. People have began thinking
critically on how they can commercialize this lucrative industry and
make lots of money while meeting the poultry consumption demands
of Kenyans. There are many factors which work in Kenyans’ favor
and which can enable them to quickly establish a poultry farming
business in Kenya. These include the following:-

-The low cost of the day old chicks
-A large network of farmers and vets from which you
can draw support
-A large and ready market for poultry products
-Solid research into the industry guided by KARI
-Good investment in poultry farming by non-governmental
organizations such as Technoserve
-Poultry Farming Techniques in Kenya

As discussed in our poultry farming manuals, there are numerous
farming systems which you can adopt as a poultry farmer.

These include;
 
-the small scale confined farming system,
-the improved semi-free range poultry farming system in Kenya and,
-the intensive commercial poultry farming system.

The free range system is not
productive enough nor is it suitable for a commercial scale where
you would wish to make some good money from your poultry
investments.
 
-Commercial poultry farming in Kenya means that you have to invest
in:
better housing, better feeding, better health management and
better feeding in order to improve the yield of your poultry.

There is a technique that you need to use in order to build an
ideal poultry house that will lead to higher survival rates for your
poultry. These simple models are covered in our poultry farming
guidebook and manuals.
 
Exotic Versus Kienyeji Breeds - The Poultry products which are currently commanding the Kenyan market are the broilers. These can be produced in very efficient conditions within a very short time.

-They typically mature very fast but they also consume vast amounts of feeds.
-In the recent years, there have been concerns that some Kenyan farmers are injecting these broilers with growth hormones in order to accelerate their growth. This has led many Kenyans to embrace more organic poultry products in the form of the Kienyeji chicken breeds.

-Since the old kienyeji chicken is not as productive, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute carried out an extensive research over 10 years and came up with an IMPROVED version of the
traditional kienyeji chickens which has higher yields both in terms of meat and eggs and which matures relatively faster.
-As a Kenyan kienyeji farmer, there are many other kienyeji-like breeds that you can also opt for. 

These include the following:-

-The Rainbow Rooster hens
-Kenbro
-Kuroiler
-KARI Improved Kienyeji Chicken.

-The advantage with all of these birds is that they can easily do
well in the hardy conditions in which many Kenyans rear their
kienyeji chickens. They are also cheap to source with the one day
old chicks costing only Ksh.100 each. The hard part would be in the
brooding of the chicks. If you do not take adequate preparations
during the brooding management and fail to regulate temperature
adequately, you are likely to see a very high mortality rate in
your chicks.

-What Chicken Breeds Should You Choose
If you are going to invest in the commercial production of both
meat and eggs, then you can go for the broiler and layers
respectively which mature faster and also lay very many eggs. You
can source these from the hatcheries.

-However, as mentioned above, one of the new trends in Kenya is
kienyeji chicken farming because many Kenyans now want
ORGANIC chicken meat which is free of chemicals or growth
hormones. 

-They want chicken which have grown naturally and
matured at the right age without any boosters, chemicals or
hormones because these are not only healthy, they are also very
sweet chicken. In Kienyeji chicken farming business, one of the
requirements that you need to incorporate is a chicken run where
you provide the hens some pasture land or grazing area where
they can scavenge, eat some grass, termites and get exposed to
sunshine. 

-This is one of the main factors that contributes to a very
good quality and nutritious meat and eggs.

-If you want to buy the KARI Improved Kienyeji chicken, you can
place an order at the KARI Naivasha and wait three weeks for
these to be delivered to you. Alternatively, you can use any of
the local hatcheries which are available and which have a
reputation for good quality.

Housing

We have written extensively on this blog and on our manuals about
the kind of housing that you should build for your birds. It should
have the right density as too much congestion will contribute to a
poor living environment which in turn impacts the yield of your
farm. It should have the right ventilation. You can choose to go
with the deep litter system based on the ground or with the
raised floor system which can accommodate a larger number of
birds.

Simple poultry house

Housing can be as expensive as you wish it to be or as cheap as
you wish it to be. There are certain materials which when used,
will significantly lower the costs of building a house. For example,
when constructing housing for one of our clients, we used the
timber offsets or planks of wood with lengths of up to 12 or 24
feet and each of these cost us only Ksh.80. We purchased 200
timber offsets which were sufficient to build a 30 feet by 15 feet
chicken house capable of accommodating up to 500 birds.

In some places in Kenya, the timber offsets are likely more
expensive and thus the costs are likely higher than this. Two rolls
of chicken wire was sufficient for us for the Kienyeji Chicken
house. Some people use bricks and concrete and some even iron
sheets or clay in order to build the outer structure. As long as
you have the right density and the right ventilation for the chicken
house, you shouldn’t really be limited with the kinds of materials
that you will use for the chicken house.

The other issue with chicken house is that you will have to
construct a chicken run where the hens can graze and feed
during the day and get exposed. Here, you can use barbed wire
and the chain link wire on top of it. Make sure the chicken run
fence is at least six feet in height.

If you will be building multiple chicken houses in rows for a truly
large scale commercial chicken farming, make sure they are
spaced out at least 40 feet apart if you have sufficient space to
work with. Ensure the litter is removed on a daily basis and the
houses replenished with clean food and water.

Feeding.

We have plenty of details on chicken feeding covered on our
feed formulation manual. This includes what you should feed and at
what age. With the kienyeji breeds, you can supplement the
commercial feeds with feeds such as grains, fishmeal etc in order
to lower the cost of production. Getting the hens to also graze
outside is also a way of lowering the cost of your production and
management;

Care Management - Cleanliness and good feeding is very key to the success of your

poultry farming venture. Know the vaccinate schedule for the
chicken and make sure you do it on time. Whenever you notice
anything unusual such as the sudden or mysterious deaths of the
chicks, ensure you call the vets as soon as possible. Good housing
and good fencing will also help keep out many predators, both
animals and humans.

Record Keeping

Do not just rear your poultry in a vacuum. Good record keeping
will help you keep tabs on various aspects of your poultry
production including mortality rates, vaccination, amount of feeding,
feeding costs and many others.

Poultry Marketing

Once you have reared your birds to maturity, this should really be
the easier part. There are numerous places where you can sell
your poultry produce such as restaurants, hotels, schools, events,
Facebook, local markets and many more. You can also sign up on
our Kienyeji Marketing Network for Ksh.500 and let us market
your poultry produce for you.

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