The Money Math of Kienyeji Chicken Farming in Kenya in 2024

Pure indigenous chicken or improved indigenous chicken locally known in Kenya as Kienyeji Chicken can be raised anywhere in Kenya, all one needs is passion, a business mindset, commitment and a little capital to start since it is among most profitable and easy manage farming ventures. It is appropriate to put in place a good plan in place on how as a farmer you will roll out this process seamlessly starting from housing, where water and feeds will come from, proximity to a veterinary doctor for treatment, vaccinations or to respond to emergencies and livestock officers for extension services, and most importantly, the farmer should plan from the outset on marketing to make it a very profitable activity to them.

Chicken Farming in Kenya

Indigenous chicken are ready for meat at about 6 months and are sold at between Kshs.550 to kshs.600 for hens and Kshs.800 to 1000 for cocks. This variety of chicken requires a six month plan to be able to allocate 200 birds for sale each month. Therefore the farmer needs to have parent stock which will give eggs every 21 days required for incubation. 

While the maturity period for improved kienyeji is faster, usually four to five months, the maturity for pure indigenous chicken is six months hence a slower way of raising chicken though their meat and eggs are very popular in the market. Farmers rearing them therefore need to exercise patience and commitment.

For those seeking info on pure kienyeji hens, here is a personal analysis, from personal experience.

also see Why Richfarm is Your Plug to Profitable Farming

If you started with 20 hens, I actually started with three chickens and a jogoo, at the end of the year you can easily have 300 plus chickens. If you put your effort to it! This is how:

Buy 20 hens that are ready to lay and 3 mature jogoos. Always keep the ratio of males to females at 1 jogoo to 7-10 females for fertilization purposes. That way you're sure your eggs are fertilized. Then the timelines will not fall far off from the illustration below: 

·          Month 1, they lay.

·          Month 2, they hatch.

·          Month 3, they rear their chicks.

Once the chicks are one month old, they don't need their mothers for warmth. So withdraw the mother when the chicks are one month old (at the end of calendar month 3) and rear the chicks yourself till they are 2.5 months old before you let them on their own (free range). This is meant to force the hen to start laying again. We are doing business not letting nature take its course! Come on. Alternatively, you can raise the chicks in a brooder without their mother, forcing the hen to start laying again even sooner. Well, let’s stick to a more easier way of doing this.

Month 4, the hens take what we call a "Laying break" to adopt to not having their chicks!

Month 5, the hens start to lay again.

Month 6, they hatch again.

Month 7, they rear the chicks (process repeats itself)! Withdraw the mother at the end of month 7.

Month 8, they are on the laying break.

Month 9 they lay again.

Month 10 they hatch.

Month 11, they rear. Withdraw mother at end of month 11.

Month 12, they take the break, waiting for month 1 of the next year to start over again.

A few things to note:

1. You can only practically do this up to 5 times for one hen before it's "tired"!

2. For every cycle, if you stay strict to the process, you get a week accrued for every hatching cycle because hens hatch after 21 days and in the post, I assumed a month for that. So you might squeeze a one month for the hens.

3. Put 8 eggs for every hen to hatch. In most cases, they'll hatch the entire 8 eggs, and for the poor hatchers, they'll hatch 7. Don't be too greedy. 8 has a good chance of hatching them all, as opposed to doing 10 plus and end up "spoiling" eggs!

4. If you take care of the chicks in a closed environment away from kites (mwewe) and other predators, you should have 5 mature hens for every hatch-cycle, per hen.

5. If you manage to get 5 hens for the 8 eggs hatched and you had 20 hens, you'll have 100 new hens for the first cycle. There are three cycles for every hen per year. That's a good 300 news hens. Plus your original 20 hens, you have 320. Let's just say 300 for the sake of it.

6. By the way, by the time the hen is watching for the third time in the year, the first batch of chicks will already be hatching too. NIIICE!

7. But remember you have an assumption 50/50 for cocks and hens, so you have 150 cocks, and 150 hens!

8. If you sell 100 mature jogoos in the Nairobi market, it's way better than trying to win the "Lotto sio Ndoto" con-game.

In all this, you got to put your mind, effort, money and most importantly, time to it. Don't look at the work right now, look at the end product.

Mature Kienyeji Chicken

And another thing, by the way, one kienyeji hen lays 15-18 eggs before wanting to hatch, if well taken care of that is. Let's say 15 eggs, give it 8 eggs to hatch and sell the other 7 eggs x 20 hens x 15 bob per egg, that's some 2000 that can go to buying you electricity tokens.

Always make sure you give the chickens the newest eggs for hatching. Eggs 15 days old have a 20% chance to hatch, 12 day old eggs have a 30% hatch rate. Eggs 10 days old have a 50% hatch chance. If it is 7 days, it shoots to 80%. Less than 7 days have a 90 plus percentage chance to hatch unless conditions like temperature and humidity fluctuate.

After hens hatch 5 times, sell them and rear the newer ones, they are rendered salvage, they don't lay that much. For those with bigger spaces, do paddocks for easier identification of ages for sale.

Always maintain your "floor stock" at 300 hens and 50 jogoos for easier management and space.

With this, you'll find out that you're collecting 200 eggs every day X 30 days = 6000 eggs less 2500 for hatching, you sell 3500 eggs every 4 months. That's 55k in 4 months. Sell 500 hens 250 jogoos and 250 mweras, at an average worst price of kienyeji 500 bob, 250,000 per year. Plus returns from eggs 55X 3 cycles totals 415K a year. Kienyeji only take about 20-25% of budget. Say 25%. Pocket the rest 311k. Average 25k a month and you don't wake up at 5 to go to work to come back home at 10 PM. More time for family.

Well, this is theory. The practicals have much more fun and some hardships but it is fun doing kienyeji, and the money is tax free unless you feel charitable enough to give the government (pun intended).

Vaccination

In the first week vaccinate the chicks against Newcastle disease (buy Newcastle lasota vaccine 200 doses), repeat Newcastle vaccine on the third and 5th week. At 4 weeks for fowl pox vaccine buy 200 doses. Repeat fowl pox vaccine at 6 weeks and Newcastle plain at 16 weeks. Notice that indigenous chicken are resistant to most diseases but this does not mean you avoid proper hygiene and good bio-security measures.

Chicken House

Remember chicken houses need not be expensive and can be constructed according to the financial ability of the farmer. This can be done using bricks, mud, iron sheets full suit or timber.

How To Construct a Chicken House

Pests

Pests that are a challenge in poultry farming include lice, fleas and bedbugs. They can be controlled by dusting or spraying the poultry and poultry house with recommended chemicals and replacing litter at the end of each crop. Parasites found inside the body such as roundworms, tapeworms can be controlled through regular deworming. One can also use natural methods in controlling some of these pests.

Feeding your Chicken Inexpensively

You can always formulate your own chicken feeds to cut down on costs of buying them. Except for a few feed manufacturers who keep to the standards in poultry feed formulations, many feed companies in the country make very poor quality feeds leading to huge losses to the chicken farmer.

Poor quality feeds lead to a slow growth in chickens, low egg production, diseases or even death. Making poultry feeds on the farm is one of the best ways to maintain quality and cut the cost of production.

The common ingredients are whole maize, maize germ, cotton seed cake, soya beans, sunflower or fish meal (omena).

To add on, farmers need to add several feed additives, that is, micro-nutrients, minerals and vitamins to make ensure their chicken have a balanced feed that meets their daily nutrient requirements.

Material is available cheaply, especially after the harvesting season. Depending on the cost of raw material, farmers who make their own feeds at home save between 30 to 50 per cent for every 70kg bag of chicken feed, depending on the source of their raw materials.

Due to government regulation, major feed companies have reduced the standard quantity of feed from 70kg to 50kg per bag, but the price of feed still remains almost the same. This means that farmers who are able to make their own feeds make great savings on feeds which take up to 80 per cent of the production costs.

To formulate feeds, farmers have to use the Pearson Square method whereby the digestible crude protein (DCP) is the basic nutritional requirement for any feed preparation for all animals and birds.

Now, assuming that a farmer wants to make feed for their chicken using this method, they have to know the crude protein content of each of the ingredients they want to use to make their feed. The following are the DCP values for each of the common ingredients used in feed making:

• Whole maize — 8.23%
• Soya — 45%
• Fishmeal (omena) — 55%
• Maize bran — 7%
• Sunflower — 35%

You can also incorporate Azolla in your feeds as it is packed with protein and essential nutrients that promote the overall health and productivity of chickens. It also improves the weight and increases the egg production. 

Make it a side hustle and it'll turn full time. MOST IMPORTANTLY: FEED them, WATER them, VACCINATE them, and give them MEDICATION at first sight of symptoms of illness. I can't stress that enough. Have fun farming. Remember,  being a farmer isn’t being uncool. It’s the new cool.

Kienyeji chicken farming is ideal for Kenyan youths who do not have access to large pieces of land and make it a very profitable farming activity. We have been exploring such opportunities to benefit our youth and we found another very lucrative one that you should consider venturing into in this year 2021.  That is mushroom farming, and as you will see from the article on our website it is nothing difficult to start. We also wrote and gave details of the profitability of mushroom farming in this article: How Profitable is Mushroom Farming in Kenya? Costs and Market analysis. 

Also see Moringa Oleifera Farming: Nutrient Power House

You also have full time support from Richfarm Kenya in case you have questions about mushroom farming through our weekly training and even on phone 0724698357.