Here's how to make your chicken feeds

Chicken eating from an automatic feeder. [iStockphoto]

After years of frequent poultry feed price increases, it is now a known fact that the prices of raw materials, especially soya, maize, wheat, sunflower and cotton seed cakes are not going down any time soon. Animal feed is one of the single most important farm inputs in poultry production and the high cost of it is making farmers get meagre earnings. If this situation doesn't change in the future, it will obviously impact on socio-economic welfare of our farming community. The Cabinet Secretary of Trade, Investment and Industry Moses Kuria stated it plainly: "We must stop the culture of complaining and look at our competitiveness. If you are not competitive, don't expect mercy from the government." So, may I ask, is own feed formulation the solution to high cost of production? Is it sensible for large scale farmers, to start thinking of making own feed at their backyard to make our products competitive enough? To answer these questions, here are factors to consider.