Kalro unveils faster growing, high production chicken

The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation has developed a new high production chicken breed.

The new breed, KC3 variant, which was unveiled in Kakamega on Monday, is disease-resistant, requires less feed, grows faster and lays more eggs per year. 

KC3 is brown in colour and comes after two other improved variants - KC1 which is spotted and KC2 which is black in colour - that were launched in 2019.

“In response to the unique consumer demands in the Western region for a brown improved chicken, we have now introduced a brown variant, the KC3, which is being launched today,” Kalro director general Dr Eliud Kireger said. 

Kireger said that KC3, like the other two breeds, is well adapted to tropical climatic conditions of almost all counties in the country. He said the unique characteristics of the new breed are that they produce up to 250 eggs in a year, starting laying at five months. 

“The weight of an egg could be up to 60 grammes while the chicken could be 2kg at only five months,” he said.

He spoke while launching a new 2, 000-bird capacity breeding and multiplication unit at the Non-Ruminant Research Institute at the Kakamega Kalro station on Tuesday.

The unit was constructed at a cost of Sh5 million through joint funding from the European Union and the government under the Climate Smart Agricultural Productivity Project. 

Kireger said that Kalro’s efforts to develop improved chicken breeds involving genetic upgrading and cross breeding with the local ones to improve on economically important traits began two decades ago.

He said the improvement focused on growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, egg-laying capacity, disease tolerance and quality of meat and body conformation.  

Currently, the country’s annual production of day-old chicks stands at 600,000 against a national demand of over two million chicks per year. 

The Kalro director general said the organisation has distributed 3.69 million chicks of improved variant to farmers across the country in the last six years.

Kireger further said that indigenous chicken accounts for 78 per cent of all poultry in Kenya and is an integral part of the farming system in many households.

“Chicken are mainly owned by women, youth and landless farmers because they provide an income and are credited for their adaptability,” Kireger said. 

Kireger said productivity of indigenous breeds is constrained by the high costs of feed, diseases, low genetic potential and poor management practices, despite accounting for more than two-thirds of the chicken population.

He said Kalro will hold a virtual scientific conference on March 27 during which scientists will share their key research findings.