Ten years ago, Nancy Nduku, a housewife started poultry farming with 100 birds; her venture has since grown into a farm with more than 400 birds.
Currently, Nduku sells 186 trays of eggs monthly at Wangige market and also has orders from two bakeries at the same place.
She invested Sh300,000, a loan obtained from a local women’s group (Chama) to buy 100 layer chicks at Sh80 each from Kenchic, built a chicken house that could accommodate 300 birds at Sh120,000 and kept the rest of the money for emergency purposes as she was not sure the endeavor would pay off.
“My poultry farm is based in Gathiga village, Kiambu County in a section of a two-acre piece of land that my husband inherited from his father,” said Nduku.
“The poultry business started to make a profit than she expected, this enabled me to repay my loan in installments and also educate my four children without worries. I have since been able to join two more group savings group, in this, she contributes between Sh2000 and Sh3000 monthly,”
The business has made it possible for her to renovate her house through interior design
n and decoration at Sh100,00 and build a bigger chicken structure that can house more than 1,000 birds where she would engage in large scale poultry production.
“One of the biggest challenges I have been facing as a poultry farmer is price fluctuation in the market, since March last year prices have been declining to force me to sell one egg at between nine and Sh10 down from Sh12 to Sh15,” she said.
“Poultry feeds are also expensive, a 70kg bag of layer feeds for instance costs Sh3,000 but only lasts for three days,”
Nduku plans to venture into dairy farming in two years’ time using proceeds from her poultry production.
According to the Economic Survey Report, Kenya produced 91,000 metric tonnes of eggs and imported one metric tonne in 2018. The value of chicken and eggs sold increased to Sh10.67bn in 2017 up from Sh8.8bn in 2016.