Employees carry on their work of slaughtering and preparing chicken meat for customers in Chwele chicken factory in Bungoma County. [Mumo Munuve, Standard
To residents of Bungoma County, when you mention Chwele Chicken slaughterhouse, it evokes memories of the Sh100,000 wheelbarrow saga. The slaughterhouse got 10 wheelbarrows at a cost of 109,300 each.
The project that cost Sh40 million was riddled with graft allegations at the onset, but the idea is gaining traction and with a new strategic partner things are looking up. When it was started in 2012 under the National Government Economic Stimulus Programme, the idea was to construct a well-developed slaughterhouse to provide a ready market where farmers can sell their chicken. It was then handed over to the county government with the inception of devolution in 2013 and in August 2016, it was launched by then Governor Ken Lusaka (now Senate Speaker). But it closed shop soon afterward. In a bid to revive it, the county sold the idea to a private investor, Shiffa Chicks, who have leased it for 20 years. The new investor is upbeat that good things lie in store for poultry farmers.
When it took over, Shiffa Chicks knew it had its work cut out. One of the areas it had to get right was to ensure it always had chicken to slaughter. To revamp operations, Shiffa Chicks has recruited more than 3,000 poultry farmers from Bungoma, Trans Nzoia, Busia and Kakamega who will ensure it has a constant supply of Kienyeji chicken.
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“Farmers are the bloodline of our slaughterhouse. In six months’ time we want them to have enough capacity to be supplying us with the daily demand of 4,000 birds to keep our slaughterhouse afloat,” says Erick Kombo, the factory manager.
Data from the Department of Agriculture in Bungoma shows that the county only has three million chickens and this cannot meet the demand of the slaughterhouse.
New Strategy
To ensure that it always has a constant supply of chicken, Shiffa Chicks set up its own hatchery with 3,000 layers with each layer giving at least 20 eggs per month. Kombo said once the eggs have been hatched, they supply the chicks to the contracted farmers at a subsidised price and they rear the rest.
Farmers are supposed to keep the birds for four months then supply them to the factory. Once a Kienyeji chicken attains between 12 and16 weeks, it's ready for slaughter.
To serve clients better, Joe Khaemba, a management consultant at Shiffa Chicks, says they plan to set up a chicken depot in Bungoma town to serve supermarkets, institutions and hotels.
According to Khaemba, a chicken that has been slaughtered and packaged sells between Sh600 and Sh750. The county is confident that Shiffa Chicks will deliver on where it failed.
“Governments world over are not good producers of goods and services. Unless through public-private partnerships. That’s why we leased the Chwele slaughterhouse to give value to the people,” says Mathews Makanda the Country’s Agriculture Executive.
According to Makanda, the Chwele slaughterhouse will give at least 700 direct jobs and 1,500 indirect jobs.
“Shiffa Chicks is awaiting certification of its products by the Kenya Bureau of Standards before it can start exporting branded chicken to the Middle East,” says Makanda.
Farmers have already started to reap the benefits.
Moses Wanyama, a poultry farmer from Lwandanyi in Sirisia constituency, says since the slaughterhouse started its operations, he has sold more than 2,000 chicken at Sh500 each.
“Due to Covid-19 and the hard economic times, there was no one to buy my stock and I was running into losses. The birds had attained 16 weeks and there was no one to buy them. It was too costly to feed them but Chwele slaughterhouse stepped in and bought all of them,” says Wanyama.
