Behind Bars, With Limited Space And Time But With A Thriving Poultry Business

Convicted for murder and incarcerated for eight years, Cissy Namisango, 27, had never worked in a poultry farm before. However, on her first encounter with poultry farming, she has managed to demystify the widely held notion that one needs acres of land to farm. 

Driven by conviction and industry, Namisango has turned the modest prison poultry farm within the confines of Kigo Women’s prison, into a kind of a demonstration farm, looking after chickens which have flourished into huge harvests winning the praise of prison authorities and marvel of fellow inmates, dazed by her achievements.

And for being exemplary, she has been rewarded by prison authorities who have bestowed on her the onerous but enviable task of training fellow inmates and prison warders, who, driven by her example have decided to venture into the poultry project.

Namisango acknowledges that the poultry farm has given her a new perspective on life. “The poultry farm has given me a renewed hope of life. After prison, I hope to invest in poultry farming,” she remarks happily. Her passion for rearing chicken is evident the moment she enters the farm.

She refers to the hens “my hens and “my chicks,” revealing a farmer whose heart and soul is embedded in the very existence of her birds. “I miss them whenever I am taken back to the cells for lock up.”

Namisango, who has worked in the farm for some time now, says she had no skills before her arrest but her prison sentence has been a blessing in disguise. She can now immunize chicken, a skill she acquired behind bars.

She is passionate about her new found skills and talks about “her poultry farm” with a lot of vigor. She explains that the project helps to supplement the prisoners’ diet. 

After learning the hard way, she has now trained fellow inmates who had no interest in poultry farming to ensure they gain skills as they serve their sentences. Besides inmates, she trains prison staff on how best to maintain a poultry farm.

Namisango says ever since she joined the poultry farm, she has never looked back, but aspires to even do better.  Poultry keeping is the only thing on her mind and she requests fellow inmates to make good use of the rehabilitation services offered in jail.

Given her initial success with poultry, Namisango now wants to expand her project of layers. When it comes to immunizing chicks, she says prison authorities provide inmates with the required drugs for vaccination.

Namisango says among the challenges she faces with her poultry project is the limited time provided to prisoners outside the cells which makes it hard for her to monitor the hens yet chicks require regular checkups especially during night.

The former house wife regrets her acts saying she would not have engaged in dubious ways that culminated into her incarceration had she acquired the farming skills earlier. She says poultry farming has given her a renewed hope of life after serving her sentence.


Sourced from News Vision Uganda: http://www.newvision.co.ug/

How Akinyi, A Successful Poultry Farmer In Kisumu Makes 100,000 Every 5 Weeks

It is the desire to be her own boss that saw Lillian Akinyi Okwiri become one of the most successful poultry keepers in Kisumu. Mrs Okwiri, 50, quit her job as an accountant after being in formal employment for only six months. To her friends, this was a risky gamble but she was convinced that time was ripe for her to go into self-employment.

“I always dreamt of being my own boss someday and I opted to hasten the process. What worried me most was whether I would still earn as much money as I did when I was employed,” she says.

After quitting her accounting job, she realised that she didn’t have enough money to go into poultry rearing, a market she had realised had few players. She started with selling second-hand clothes to generate enough cash to venture into poultry keeping.

“I also started making ice-cream from my house and selling it to school-going children. I got a little cash and added it to what I was earning from the clothes business,” she says.

After a few months, she had raised Sh30,000 and was ready for take off. I had no formal training in poultry keeping, but had the urge to make money and that is what has seen me thrive, she says.

“I had done little research and realised that Kenyan traders import poultry products such as eggs from neighbouring counties. I knew that there was money in this venture,” she says.

She started with 150 day-old layer chicks costing Sh100 each and converted one of her bedrooms to house the birds.

After five weeks, the broilers were ready for the market while layers took between four to five months to start laying eggs. Soon she moved the chicken from her bedroom to a structure that could accommodate 600 chicks.

“I used local materials, wire mesh and iron sheets,” she says.

Counting her profits every day, Mrs Okwiri is doing booming business and is an envy of many in Kisumu’s Nyamasaria estate and has a total of 1,000 chicks—700 broilers and 300 layers.

She has turned into a beacon of success for many women who seek advice on poultry keeping.

Years later, does she regret quitting formal employment?

“I have no regrets because I made the right move. Had I clung onto my job then, I wouldn’t have made such impressive strides,” she says.
Mrs Okwiri says she gets at least Sh100,000 every five weeks from selling broilers which costs Sh400 each.

“ I collect close to 10 crates of eggs every day with a crate selling at Sh330,” she says.

When business is at its peak, she says she receive orders to supply up to 150 birds per day. ‘‘During such periods, I am forced to wake up as early as 4 am and to hire more casual labourers,” she says.

She mainly sells broilers to hotels and learning institutions in Kisumu.

Mrs Okwiri says that to attain her success, a lot has to be put in taking care of the chicken.

“A lot has to be done like buying feeds and drugs and these must be obtained from accredited dealers to guarantee quality. In the five weeks of rearing, the broilers use around five bags of starter mash which goes at Sh2,250 a bag and 17 bags of finisher pellet, with a bag selling at Sh2,850,’’ she says.

“The layers also eat a lot of food.” She says the chicks also have to be vaccinated against New Castle disease and given multivitamins.

“Buying of feeds and drugs is a challenge because the prices go up but you have to feed the chicks to weigh more in order to fetch better prices,” she says. To those planning to go into business, she says: ‘‘Start-ups don’t pick up as fast as one may want but patience pays.”

She encourages women and youth to learn to be self-dependent.

“They should not just sit by waiting for miracles to happen; I challenge them to take their destiny into their own hands. I have a very supportive husband but that does not mean that I should not work,” she says.

Story sourced from Business Daily: Done by Angie angieoketch99@gmail.com

Why I Gave Up Keeping Layers and Turned To Hatching Kienyeji Chicks

Keeping chicken for egg production used to be a very lucrative business. But that was before many other farmers ventured into the business and the feeds manufacturers inflated their prices to more than double. Today, keeping layers can still be profitable but only if one has a constant market and knows how to provide alternate feeding. If you are looking for real money from chicken farming, you ought to go Richard’s way.

Richard Rono hails from Kapchekoro village in Bomet County. He is now a seasoned poultry farmer having started more than five years ago. Initially, he was keeping exotic chicken breeds for egg production. He was selling the eggs in the local market before many other farmers got into the business and saturated the market.

“I realized that the profit margins had greatly reduced so I figured out that I had to do something to keep the profitability of my business”, he says.

Looking at the poultry business, Rono realized that there was little competition in hatching chicks. It was even better with the kienyeji breed since no one at the time was hatching kienyeji chicks for sale.

Seeing the new opportunity, Rono went ahead and bought a number of Kienyeji hens and a manual incubator. The 360-egg capacity incubator cost him Ksh.50,000. On realizing that the market he served was bigger than he had envisioned, he bought another incubator, this time a 480-egg capacity automatic incubator for sh.150,000. He also constructed a semi-permanent shelter for his mature chicken and other pens for the chicks.

How much money does he make?

Today, he keeps about 100 hens at any time. To ensure that the eggs produced by the hens are fertile and ready for incubation, he ensures that he keeps the recommended ratio of 1 cock to 7 hens. He therefore keeps about 15 cocks at any given time. All the mature chicken are allowed to browse his compound after being fed in the morning.

With an average of 100 hens, it takes Rono less than 10 days to get enough eggs for the two incubators. He sells the surplus eggs at Sh.20 each.

“In every month, I make about Sh.20,000 from selling the eggs. That is after deducting the cost of feeds and other expenses.” He says.

He hatches about 500 chicks every month. The rest of the space he uses to hatch eggs for other farmers in his village and charges them Sh.1 per egg per day. Rono says that he raises about Sh.10,000 from this venture, money he uses to foot electricity bills and for buying charcoal that he uses in the brooders.

After hatching, Rono first keeps the young chicks in a brooder for about a month before selling them off. Each chick is then sold for Sh.150. In a good month, he will sell all the chicks.

“It costs me about Sh.20,000 to vaccinate and feed the chicks for a month. That leaves me with a good profit of about Sh.45,000 every month. Sometimes I am not able to sell all the chicks within the first month. In that case I keep them and after feeding them for another month, I sell them at 250 each which makes even more profit.”

Do the math and you realize that, with only 100 hens, the young man makes about Sh.65,000 every month. He uses less than half an acre of land to do the farming and only spends about an hour to feed the chicken in the morning.

Kwa kweli, vijana tunawaza make doh na farming. 

Youngest Most Successful Chicken Farmer Making About 30K A Month From Kienyeji Chicken

I have previously done stories about people who are making millions from chicken farming; the likes of billionaire Nelson Muguku and multi-millionaire Geoffrey Kago. I even recently told the story of a 23-year old man who was making about 200K a month from raring chicken while still in campus. But believe me none of this stories ever inspired me like the story of 17-year old Robi Lemayian.

It’s not the much that he makes from his small kienyeji chicken farm in an interior village of Narok county that is inspiring, but the passion, the dedication and the zeal with which he does his farming to make as much as many university graduates in the country are making today.

A Blessing in Disguise

Joining a day secondary school near his village after garnering an impressive 312 out of possible 500 marks at KCPE may not have been his dream. However, the inability of his parents to pay for his school fees in a better boarding school came as a blessing in disguise. Since he would go back home every day after 4 pm, he figured out that he could use the few hours before darkness set in to do something constructive.

When he joined secondary school in 2012, many were the times when Robi’s parents could really struggle to raise the few thousand shillings he needed to pay for his fees. During such times, they would resolve to sell the few chickens they had and the proceeds went a long way to help them settle the fees problem. Seeing how the small birds helped them in times of economic crises, Robi developed an interest in raring them.

Starting from scratch

While in form one, during one of the school holidays, Robi started constructing a chicken cage. He would go to the nearby forest to get materials for his project. He constructed the walls of the cage using interwoven twigs which he plastered with mud to protect the chicken from cold at night. He then collected and cut open metal tins that are used to package different products such as cooking oil. This served as the roofing material.

The first mile to success

Since he couldn’t afford to buy the starting stock, he borrowed a hen from his mother. Thanks to the village life, he didn’t need a cock since the many neighbour’s cocks would provide free serving.  

Things were working well for Robi and being in school, he could collect the food remains every day during lunch time. He used this to feed the hen every morning before he went to school. It was not long before he started collecting an egg each day. He did not get tempted to sell the eggs since he knew that this was a seed for a better future. He kept all the eggs and by the time the hen showed signs that it was ready to incubate the eggs, he had about 15 of them, all of which he incubated.

That was the beginning of Robi’s journey to success. It was a successful hatch that saw him get about 12 chicks which he took so good care of that they all grew to maturity. He doesn’t remember exactly how many the hens were, but he says he sold off the cocks to pay school fees while he kept the hens which he used to increase his stock.

Fast Multiplication

With several hens, Robi’s chicken multiplied so fast that by the end of 2013, he had about 70 hens. He used his holiday time to expand the cages, all the while using the locally available materials and doing the construction himself. By this time, he could manage to sell a crate of eggs every day. His market was the teachers in the nearby schools. The demand for eggs was surprisingly high and this is what motivated him to continue with his chicken business.

Three years down the line…

Today, Robi has more than 200 kienyeji chickens which he keeps on free range and sells about 4 crates of eggs every day at 330 each. He makes enough money to take him to any school of his choice but he says that he doesn’t wish to leave his current school. He now realizes the lack of fees in his early years of school was a blessing. He makes so much money at 17 years that people, including his teachers, now come to learn from him. 

Machakos County Takes Major Steps in Promoting Quail Farming

Below is a post by Larry Wambua who attended a Quail Farmers Conference at Machakos County:

Just finished the quail farming workshop at Garden Hotel, Machakos.
The attendance was impressive, with over 150 people in attendance. There were presentations by the task force on quail farming, KWS, the National Director of Livestock Production and KARI Katumani.

After sharing information with the participants, it was agreed among many others as follows;
a) Machakos County Quail Farmers Association was Formed.
b) KWS will immediately appoint a County Licensing Officer for Machakos.
c) The Director of Marketing in the Ministry of Agriculture will immediately
set up structures to market quail products from the County. He will also
set up a County butchery for quails and chicken.
d) There will be an information desk on quails in the Ministry headquarters.
e) The next meeting will be next month.
f) The Ministry will henceforth regulate and set standards for the industry in the county for the good of all.

We look forward to exciting times ahead, friends.

This is the kind of organization and support we are looking forward to seeing from stake holders in Agri-business. Kudos Machakos County.

Quail Farming Is NOT A Pyramid Scheme: Learn From Australians

Guess when the quail farming industry begun in Australia… 1970! The largest producer of quails in Australia, Game Farm, started their business in 1975. And if you think Kenya is producing a large number of quails, you need to hear this; Game Farm produces about 3.55 million birds annually. I know you don’t wanna make that calculation so let me help you; it’s an average of 296,000 birds per month or 9,900 birds per day! 

That is just about Australia, and mark you, the Game Farm only produces birds for slaughter. So when people talk of quail farming in Kenya being a pyramid scheme, it clearly shows they do not understand what potential the industry carries. Should you compare the number of quails that Kenyans produce per year with what comes from countries that started the business a few years back, it is a real mockery to the potential of our fertile country.

Clive and Erika Wylie from Banyard Game Birds, 

a quail farm at Pittsworth.

The most commonly bred species of quails in Australia’s commercial enterprises is Corturnix Corturnix japonica; that is what we commonly call the Japanese Quails here in Kenya and that is exactly what you will also find in most quail farms in Kenya. This species produces an average of 280 eggs per hen annually and if a male to female ratio of 1:3 is observed, the hatchability is over 70%. Margaret, a farmer in Ruiru actually says that if you maintain cleanliness and handle the incubator well, the hatchability is 90%.

Quails mature at week 6. A mature Japanese quail weighs 160g and takes no more than 30g of feeds daily. You can imagine what a chick takes then. Let’s be realistic; quail farming in Kenya is the in-thing and not a pyramid scheme by any chance. Go right into it fearlessly and scale the heights to as high as you can possibly get. The largest producer of quails in Kenya that I have seen so far has about 10,000 birds. You can be better than that, can’t you?

I wish you the very best as you start your way into the millionaire’s club and may the small birds help you fly high.

To keep yourself informed about the quail farming business in Kenya, you can follow me on twitter by simply sending FOLLOW emfani to 8988 or 40404 if you are on Airtel. It's all free and you will get all the twits via sms. You actually need not be on twitter yourself.