Chicken Businesses
Raising chickens has traditionally been seen as a small scale activity based around the home with no real income potential and is associated with women, which is why LTT chose to work in this area. How better to support the household by enhancing the knowledge and skills of women?
The training is delivered by one of our Community Agricultural Officers (CASOs) who has become a specialist in this area. At the end of the training the delegates are charged to build a coop and if they successfully do so are gifted ten 6 week old chickens with the target of raising the flock to 30.
To see how the delegates were getting on, I went to visit some and was blow away by their success.
Mary lives with her two daughters (15 and 9) and has no full time work. She received training in June 2022 having had no previous experience with raising chickens. She joined the training with her sister who had some experience of breeding chickens. Going with her sister gave her the courage to join the programme.
Mary learnt to inspect the chickens’ faeces each day, for if the faeces is yellow, she told me, that is bad and must take action straight away and get treatment.
As a result of the training Mary built coops to keep her chickens safe from predators and from disease, after which she received 10 chickens from us to kick start her business, each being 6- weeks old. When the chicks were 4 months old, she sold 3 of them and with the money, and some savings she bough 100 one day old chicks and 50kg of feed. This was a big investment for her and only able because of the confidence her training has provided. The 7 mature chickens are large and free range, she keeps them separate from her new chickens because “they are bullies to the little ones”.
Mary’s plan is to raise them to 4 months and sell half and use the money to enlarge the coop, so that she can move closer to her dream of having 500 chickens. With the income from that she wants to fund her daughters’ education and enlarge their home.
Ruby used to have chickens before, they were free range, and fed on left overs from the previous nights dinner, she did not consider it a business, but occasionally got eggs, and chicks. She heard about the training and thought it would be worth knowing more.
The big revelation to her was the diet, she recognised that the diet of left overs was not giving the chickens the nutrients they needed ad were therefore not building up their immune system.
In the training she learnt about hydroponics as a way of growing nutritious food for the chickens. She decided to adapt this knowledge to her own environment. She grew sorghum alongside her maize and then took the seeds it produced and established a nursery and when the seeds sprouted, she feed them to the chickens.
Of the 10 chickens she was given, she sold three when matured, ate one, and one was stolen when her grand child was left in charge. She has bought 5 more.
Her long term aim is to raise them but and sell them to buy more until she has 500 chicks with a few to selling 450 and keep 50 back for egg production