Poultry rearing system that offers impressive yields

Kenya: The normal way of rearing poultry is doing free range for ‘kienyeji’ and for layers, putting them in a chicken structure. But farmers are embracing a new technology that promises good returns — rearing the layers in a cage. Peter Kioi from Nderu village, Limuru constituency, is a pioneer in this new technology. Villagers throng his farm just to marvel at this innovation.

He has two houses, and in the first one, a 1,000 hens are put into identical cages, in cubicles housing three. The cubicles are enjoined and arranged in three tiers, like floors in a storeyed building, with each tier having 72 chickens. This system gave rise to the name battery cages, due to the formation of rows and columns of the identical cages with a common wall dividing the cells, like in a battery.