Here’s a quick summary of what you can do to make in poultry farming in Kenya:
- Learn the basics of poultry farming
- Consider alternative feed sourcing, to reduce or diversify feed costs. If you’re a large scale farmer you can consider producing your own feed inputs
- Use high quality poultry feeds and in right feed formulations. You can consult feed grading labs to check feed quality
- Get practical knowledge on flock management, theory is not enough
- Get into poultry farming if you’re are passionate about it
- Talk, consult with other farmers, agronomists, and agro-dealers
- Attend farmer trainings, expos, etc
- Use the internet proactively to showcase your produce and find markets for your produce; relying on brokers will squeeze your margins
- Build climate resiliency in your farming operations
- Remote farming or phone farming will most likely guarantee failure
- Implement biosecurity measures and flock management strategies
- Make data based farming decisions e.g. When buying poultry breeds, ensure you’re getting the most productive breed and you’re not being misled when purchasing a flock
- Visit the farm where you are purchasing your flock from to ensure flock integrity
- Keep poultry records so that you can calculate the productivity of your flocks including calculating feed conversion rate
- If possible setup circular farming so that you can reduce waste. For instance recycle kitchen scraps by feeding them to chicken, and using chicken manure in your garden
You can use Kukufarm poultry app to manage your poultry farm and keep flock records. You can get it from Google Play and App Store.
You may also be interested in 10 Reasons why poultry farming fails and how to avoid them.