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    Poly­thene lin­ing keeps ducks home for Machakos farmer

    A Machakos County poultry farmer has found a cheap way to pre­vent ducks from stray­ing to nearby water bod­ies, by put­ting up a poly­thene-lined pool in his back­yard.

    Wam­bua Math­eka’s ducks used to fly to Athi River in search of water but he has con­tained the birds in his com­pound after dig­ging out a simple pool and lin­ing it with a poly­thene sheet.

    The walls of pool are slanted four-feet by seven-feet, and it deep­ens to­wards the centre. Math­eka re­plen­ishes the water every two to three days.

     This type of im­pro­vised pool may be tens of times cheaper than those made from ce­ment or sand be­cause he only bought the poly­thene lin­ing, which costs between Sh200 and Sh500 per square metre.

    The per­man­ent ones re­quire bricks or blocks, ce­ment, sand, nil and an ex­pert to con­struct.

    ducks.JPG

    Ducks dis­ap­pear­ing from home

    Math­eka’s ducks, of which one of them was the first run­ner’s up in the Machakos County Ag­ri­cul­tural Show 2016 edi­tion, star­ted dis­ap­pear­ing to the river soon after he bought them in 2014.

    They never came back un­less he went search­ing for them at the river, which is more than five kilo­met­ers from his home, in the even­ing.

    “The two first ducks strayed and stayed at the river until even­ing. It happened sev­er­ally. I had to look for a solu­tion be­fore los­ing them. That is when I came up with the homestead swim­ming pool,” he said.

    He bor­rowed the idea from fish farm­ers, who use a lin­ing to con­tain water in the back­yard ponds.

    Ducks are web-feet birds that spend most of their time in water swim­ming and wad­ing in search of food like earth­worms.

    Ducks feed while swim­ming

    He feeds the free-range birds as they swim in the pool by throw­ing ve­get­ables and other kit­chen re­mains into the water. He has also placed a two-litre plastic basin near the pool, which car­ries com­mer­cial feeds mixed with water.

    “Ducks are wa­ter-lov­ing birds. They feed well from water. The basin is placed near the swim­ming pool, where they can see it when they are out of the water,” he said.

    Quick matur­ing

    It takes between eight and 10 months for one duck to at­tain at least five kilos.

     

    By the end of 2015, he had 20 ducks weigh­ing between four and six kilo­grammes. He earned more than Sh30,000 after selling them at a min­imum of Sh2,000. His stock has since risen to 17 birds again. 

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