- Most farmers and organisations who started poultry projects had stopped because of poor quality chicks.
- World Bank under the National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth launched the Sh25 million project at Nyailing’a village in Suna West.
Image: MANUEL ODENY
Migori county is registering hatcheries and poultry breeders ahead of the opening a Sh25 million processing plant.
On Friday, officials from the agriculture department, poultry farmers and officials from the new poultry plant financed by World Bank met over the issue.
“Migori county has no registered poultry hatchery and breeders, famous breeds too have agents who are yet to be registered that is why we have scaled up official and legal registration,” director of livestock Charles Nyaanga said.
He said the effect was that most farmers and organisations who started poultry projects had dropped out because of poor quality chicks.
“Because of lack of license we have illegal outfits who do in-breeding and hard to trace parent stock, which has led to high mortality, stunted growth and poor quality birds,” Nyaanga said.
In June last year, the World Bank under the National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth (Narig) launched the Sh25 million project at Nyailing’a village in Suna West. The project targets rural communities in 21 counties, including Migori.
The Rural Integrated Poultry, Cooperative and Marketing Society will be charged with managing the project. Director John Okeyo said within three months the machines will roar to live and need for raw materials has been their biggest headache.
“We now have a solution to our ready chickens for sale especially for farmers who have complained of market,” Okeyo said.
He said the plant will be able to process 400 chicken per hour, a fact that requires large numbers of farmers.
“We have a plan that a village should have a unit of ten farmers rearing 30 birds each which within three-and-half months are ready for harvest for about Sh1,000 each. That means within that period about a quarter a million will circulate there,” Okeyo said.
He registering hatcheries and breeders would help produce better and stronger chicks.
“As a local farmer who hatches and breeds poultry, this will be welcome because we source quality birds from Eldoret and Naivasha, and the long distance sees a lot of mortality for day-old chicks during transportation which can be up to 50 per cent,” Grace Atieno, chairlady of Chuodho Women Group, said.
The 26-member group was started in 1986, and in 2014 they acquired a 250-egg incubator and 600 local chicken breeds which they distributed to members.
“By the end of 2015 we realised we were not making any profit, so we sold off all the local chicken and bought 1,000 improved kienyeji birds which started boosting our capacity,” Atieno said.
She said soon they acquired two incubators with 4,600 hatching capacity which has seen them hatch and sell day-old chicks to farmers.
“We realised the long distance to getting quality chicks was killing farmers’ dreams so we locally sourced eggs from our birds and outside, but we are keen on getting registered as the local chicken processing plant will be a game changer,” she said.
Stakeholders said getting a license from the Directorate of Veterinary Services is hard as it requires poultry structures should be 50-100 metres away from other livestock with bio-security provisions.