Chicken coop cleanliness - A success story

Off the Karatina-Sagana highway in Kirinyaga County sits Kibingoti village, where farming is residents’ mainstay. Farms are dotted with maize, arrowroots, beans, French beans and bananas.

In Joseph Muraguri farm, while he grows some of those crops, chicken rearing is his main venture. With his wife Margaret, he keeps 450 chickens on their eighth-acre farm in a business they started in 2011.But unlike many farmers who have abandoned the layers altogether or keep only the new breeds like Kuroiler or Kari Kienyeji, the two rear both.

Chicken served water with nipple drinkers

They keep 260 layers and 190 Kuroiler birds, 30 which are cockerels, a venture Muraguri calls mixed poultry farming. They rear the two breeds in separate storied coops made of wood to prevent interbreeding. The layers occupy the lower coop while the Kuroilers the top.

"We keep the layers mainly for the production of eggs, which are fairly priced and do well in the market while the Kuroilers are for our hatchery business. The two breeds supplement each other,” explains Muraguri.

“When the chicks are yet to hatch, we are always in the business of selling eggs from the layers to enable us buy feeds and pay farm bills. "Their incubator has a capacity of 3,168 eggs and going by the number of Kuroiler hens they have, it does not run to capacity.

They collect 170 to 190 eggs daily from the layers and between 110 and 130 eggs from the Kuroilers. "We put an average of 600 eggs every week in the incubator enabling us to hatch an average of 400 chicks weekly. We put the eggs at intervals to ensure we get chicks every week,” says Muraguri, adding that they sell surplus fertilised eggs from the Kuroilers at Sh25 each.

The couple sell day-old chicks for Sh100, week-old at Sh120, two weeks old at Sh150, three weeks at Sh200 and four weeks old at Sh250 each.

A tray of eggs from layers goes for Sh280 while the fertilised eggs from Kuroilers go for Sh750 or Sh25 each.

Suffering losses - According to Muraguri, their greatest challenge is the high cost of chicken feeds and drop in prices of unfertilised eggs to as low as low Sh9 each. Muraguri says he decided to keep the two breeds after suffering losses. “With my wife Margaret, I started with keeping quails but no sooner had we reaped from our business than it went under.

We also tried broilers and poor market made the going tough for us,” says Muraguri, noting they sunk over Sh200,000 in the two agribusinesses. Unbowed, the couple then moved to keeping the layers and the Kuroilers.

"We invested Sh100,000 in the initial project which we used to buy wood, watertanks, pipes and the nipple water drinkers.We further invested Sh220,000 in the incubator. ”The drinkers are the other farming practice that makes their chicken farm stand out.

The couple invested in the nipple drinkers for better hygiene due to minimum spillage.“The drinking system is easy to clean, allows easy access of the birds to the drinking water and provision of medication or other additives through the drinker and there is less ammonia in the poultry house,” said Muraguri, adding it is a system that one makes using locally available materials.

Plastic pipes are among the materials he used to make the system. They feed the layers 30kg layers mash daily while the Kuroilers consume 25kg. The couple disposes both the layers and Kuroilers after about 15 months to traders in Karatina, Nyeri, Sagana and Kibingoti shopping centre.

Doris Wambui, an agricultural officer at Wambugu Agricultural Training College in Nyeri, says the only challenge with keeping separate hybrid breeds is cross-breeding.“Cross-breeding the hybrids erodes the original breeds and tends to interfere with genes, leading to weaker birds.

It is advisable you ensure they do not breed. "She encourages farmers to de-beak their hens to prevent them from pecking eggs and each other. "Farmers can use a beak treater which resembles a nail cutter to make the beaks blunt. She further advised farmers to use the nipple drinkers to maintain high levels of hygiene as the chickens do not dip their beaks in the drinking water.

Source: Seeds of Gold

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