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    Rear­ing chicken and cows triple Kisii farmer’s earn­ings

    A de­cision to keep dairy cows in the same space with poultry is pay­ing off for Ed­ward Mainga with the cow dung provid­ing worms for the chicken while the chicken turns the dung into ma­nure that is used to grow fod­der for the cows a ven­ture that has not only in­creased milk and egg pro­duc­tion but also seen him re­duce la­bour costs.

    But it wasn’t al­ways this way for the Kisii farmer. When he de­cided to ven­ture into dairy farm­ing in 2006, he bought one su­per­ior dairy cow through a Dairy Cow Com­mon In­terest Group, a re­volving fund that as­sisted farm­ers ac­cess high yield­ing cattle vari­ety. But two years into the trade, things star­ted going south.  The dry spell took their toll on fod­der with the situ­ation being ex­acer­bated by un­pre­ced­en­ted rise in feed prices.  

    But after at­tend­ing farmer train­ing ses­sions. he learnt how to tame pro­duc­tion costs while max­im­iz­ing yields through di­ver­si­fic­a­tion. “I had a two acre piece of land but I real­ized how much I was wast­ing my land on. I learnt how in­vest in vari­ous farm­ing tech­niques in order to spread my risks,” said Mainga. “I de­cided to pro­duce my own feeds using the Farm yard ma­nure. I use the de­com­posed dung which has proved very ef­fect­ive’’.

    Through his own in­nov­a­tions, Ed­ward de­cided to in­teg­rate local poultry farm­ing with dairy­ing. He col­lects the fresh dung from the zero graz­ing units and spreads it in the local chicken run. As the dung de­com­poses the chicken keep on turn­ing the mat­ter as they search for mag­gots / worms and other in­sects for feed­ing.

    The run is stra­tegic­ally sited at a ba­nana plot. The ba­na­nas too are reap­ing nu­tri­ent from the ma­nure pre­pared. These ba­na­nas offer can­opy pro­tec­tion of young chicks from pred­at­ors like the hawks. The run has peri­meter fence made of the chicken mesh of­fer­ing fur­ther pred­ator pro­tec­tion and pre­vent­ing the birds from des­troy­ing other crops in the kit­chen garden and in the neigh­bours’ farms.

    The chicken serves to provide la­bour through turn­ing the dung into ma­nure and also weed­ing the ba­nana plot through scratch­ing the mat­ter. The con­tin­ued scratch­ing ‘ma­tures’ the ma­nure faster. The ready ma­nure is car­ried to the fod­der and crop  plots much eas­ily as it is lighter in weight. Sur­plus ma­nure is sold to neigh­bours.

    Mainga re­ports that this kind of prac­tice has as­sisted him re­duce la­bour cost by upto 40 per­cent while in­creas­ing his in­come from Sh2, 000 that he used to earn monthly through sale of milk and his ba­na­nas to Sh20,000. “I now in­tend to util­ize all the space in the farm by build­ing more poultry pens and cow sheds. If one cow and ten chicken can earn me Sh20,000 I in­tend to earn Sh500,000 if I ex­pand,” said Mainga.

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