When she opened the gate leading to a colourfully flowered drive, one could hardly believe that the young, very clean and beautiful lady was going to be our host during this farm visit. Joy Wamahiga Wambugu, who recently finished her secondary education at Precious Blood Kagwe, is indeed the most ambitious young girl our team has ever met in the field of agribusiness. As she took us round her small farm explaining critical aspects in detail, you couldn’t fail to notice a sharp focus on and a clear vision for the project. Here’s her truly inspiring story.
“The love to watch and care for birds runs through my veins as does my blood. Since I was in high school, I always wanted to do this.” She answers when I ask what motivated her to do this project. The project started in 2014 while she was still in school.
“I really thank my mom; she oversaw the construction of the houses and the battery cage unit when I was away. She considered my ideas and I loved the results. She even bought the chicks for me and got someone to care for them before I came home.” She explains how the project started as her supportive mother smiled and nodded in acknowledgement.
While Joy’s project is her first, she surely isn’t fumbling around. “This is where I apply the concepts I learned from Mr. Rioba, my agriculture teacher.” She says adding that apart from what she learned in class, she has been reading wide about agribusiness ventures on the internet and other journals. She acknowledged that her passion would not have been enough to help her steer the project that far without knowledge, a fact I strongly agreed with.
The project currently has slightly over 350 layers. The initial number was 400 but 4 chicks were lost in the brooding stage. The others were lost thanks to a recent sweep of Newcastle over Kahawa Sukari Estate in Nairobi where her farm is located.
The layers are kept in two poultry houses. In one, Joy uses the battery cage system where she keeps 180 layers. The cages are tilled one above the other in four rows on either side of a pyramid-like structure. Each row has 8 cages of about 45cm by 45cm each. In each of the cages, she keeps three layers or two in some. The battery cage system which is fitted with nip drinkers cost her Sh.100,000.
The rest of the layers are kept in the other house where Joy uses the deep litter system. However she says that even though the battery cage system is expensive to install, it has a lot of advantages over deep litter system. One is that the eggs collected are clean. The risk of having the eggs broken by chicken is also low since they roll to a collection space out of the cage. Feeding is also easy and the feeds do not get contaminated by chicken droppings. Cleaning is also easy and since the chicken waste drop out of the cage, the chicken are always in a clean environment.
When I asked about her profit margins, Joy’s face became a little dull. “The recent disease made them reduce their productivity. I used to collect 9 to 10 trays a day but now I collect 5; or 6 on a good day.” She said and attributed the loss to the fact that she had skipped one immunization. It’s a lesson she learned the hard way. However she said that she was lucky to have a regular customer who buys the eggs at Sh.300 per tray. A bag of layers mash, which costs her Sh.2200 takes her for two days. With that, she still makes good profit.
She plans to expand the farm to include kienyeji chicken and broilers. She actually had an open space ready for the kienyeji chicken and preparations were underway for the broilers. She hopes to move the project to a bigger land, a firm vision that is reflected in the way she has constructed her poultry houses: they are bolted together in such a way that they can easily be detached and moved.
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| The cage system |
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| Joy in the deep liter house |
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