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Stephen Omuhande (left) with Jack Omondi at the poultry farm in Kakamega. They have a similar farm at Litein in Kericho County. [Nathan Ochunge, Standard]
Three young graduates who are friends completed university education together and secured good jobs four years years ago.
Other than being friends, they also shared a common passion - they loved poultry keeping.
Stephen Omuhande from Kakamega County, Anita Cherono from Kericho and Jack Omondi from Siaya County — would meet on most weekends to catch up and exchange notes on poultry keeping.
“Although we come from different areas, on most weekends, we would meet and catch up. We would also challenge ourselves to start poultry keeping and thrive like farmers we read about on Smart Harvest. During one of our get-togethers, we agreed to start a joint poultry project,” says Omuhande.
In 2018, they started saving money towards that goal.
“In August last year, we resigned from our jobs and started a poultry farm at Litein in Kericho at Anita’s ancestral home. We settled on this place because of the ideal climatic conditions and availability of feeds. We each contributed a certain amount as seed capital, says Mr Omuhande.
The trio started with 1,000 day-old chicks which they bought from KenChic, the Issa Brown Breed at Sh115 each which translates to Sh115,000. The birds were all layers.
Pilot project
Omuhande says though the poultry project started as a pilot, with time it picked up well and they are able to enjoy some solid profits which they share equally. In January this year, the birds started laying eggs.
“We could collect between 850 to 900 eggs daily. By late February we had collected 54,000 which translates to 188 trays of eggs which we sold at Sh280 per tray,” says Omuhande.
Along the way to boost the business, they added another 4,076 day-old chicks to the farm and subsequently started another poultry in Shisebu village in Butere Sub county.
“We also imported chicken cages from China since they are half the price as compared to those in the Kenyan market,” says Omuhande.
He says by June this year, the second stock started laying eggs and now, they collect between 4,000-4,300 eggs at the Butere farm and another 4,000-4,500 eggs at the Kericho one.
Their major clients are boda boda riders who buy crates of eggs and hawkers who boil eggs in bus stops and trading centres. But the high cost of feeds is eating into their profit margins.
“To counter that, we decided to venture into feed production as a cost cutting measure. We went for bench marking in Uganda and underwent a short course on food formulation which we are slowly perfecting,” says Mr Omondi, who is in charge of feeds formulation at the farm.
To set the ball rolling, Omondi says they bought a feed mill mixer at Sh100,000 which reduced cost for feeds by half.
“We use maize with moisture content below 14 per cent (96kilos), maize bran (84kilos), bone mill (30kilos), sunflower seedcake (30kilos), koudjis layer concentrate and lime (30kilos) which is mixed to make feeds for layers,” says Mr Omondi.
Feeds making
Omondi says the Koudjis layer concentrate is imported from the Netherlands and is rich in amino acids and vitamins which are essential for maximum production of eggs.
They feed the layers on Galdus starter (pellets) which is rich in nutrients to enhance growth of the chicks for the first seven days and then substitute with chick mash until when the birds start laying eggs.
They change the feeds to layers’ mash until the stock is disposed off.
According to Anita Cherono, who oversees the Human Resource department a bird is supposed to lay between 300 – 350 eggs in its lifetime before it can be disposed of and taken as meat.
Imports from Uganda
Ms Cherono says for a farmer to get maximum production of eggs for layers, he must ensure he maintains the vaccination regime required for layers’ failure to which he will incur losses.
She says layers at day one are vaccinated against Mareks disease and Inflammatory bowel disease which is then followed by Newcastle vaccine administered in drinking water between day 15-18 and then repeated between week 6 – 8 together with fowl pox vaccine.
No regrets
The biggest challenge is the cheap imports from Uganda. “Though we are in a liberalised market, we must admit that cheap eggs from Uganda is hurting Kenyan poultry farmers. Our counterparts from Uganda have an easy time because feeds are cheap and this lowers their production costs,” says Omondi.
Tough the journey maybe, Cherono says they don’t regret leaving their jobs for poultry business because it has given them independence and financial fulfillment.
In five years, the team plans to expand the business to 50,000 birds.
The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization
with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print operations,
television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The Standard Group
is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in
matters of national and international interest.
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