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    Uasin Gishu Based CBO aban­dons crop farm­ing for chicken rear­ing

    CHICKS, Mary Poultry farm, nakuru, by Laban Robert.JPG

    Berur farm­ers group has re­sor­ted to chicken rear­ing due mul­tiple crop losses

    Many small­holder crop farm­ers across Kenya as face many chal­lenges in­clud­ing un­re­li­able rain­fall and low crop yields due to the ex­ist­ing cli­mate change that has led to un­pre­dict­able rain­fall pat­terns and crop dis­eases and pests such as fall army worm which has dev­ast­ated more than 700,000 ha of crops.

    Berur Com­munity Based Or­gan­iz­a­tion, a farm­ers group with thirty mem­bers in Kapseret, Uasin Gishu County de­cided to ven­ture into in­di­gen­ous poultry rear­ing after many crop fail­ures and losses in their farms.

    The mem­bers joined hands in 2013 after re­ceiv­ing train­ing and ad­vice from the Ag­ri­cul­tural Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and the Anglican De­vel­op­ment Sec­tor. The two or­gan­iz­a­tions trained the farm­ers on Se­lec­tion and breed­ing, Dis­ease dia­gnosis and man­age­ment, vac­cine hand­ling and usage, vices re­lated to pro­duc­tion and their man­age­ment, hatch­ery man­age­ment, chick brood­ing and place­ment, feed­ing and feed for­mu­la­tion, hous­ing and re­cord keep­ing.

    READ ALSO: Rear­ing over 80 chick­ens on a two by two metres space

    READ ALSO: KALRO un­veils su­per-yield in­di­gen­ous chicken

    READ ALSO: A com­mon weed that pre­vents coc­ci­di­osis in chicken

    Rael Tai, the County Co­ordin­ator Ag­ri­cul­tural Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme notes that one of the big chal­lenges the farm­ers faced in the ini­tial stages was the con­trol of dis­eases in the chicken. “Be­fore, farm­ers had chal­lenges in con­trolling dis­eases like gum­boro, New­castle & coc­ci­di­osis, but with simple train­ing, the farm­ers are now ex­per­i­en­cing min­imal dis­ease at­tack on their chicken” ob­serves Rael.

    Anne Men­gich, one of the mem­bers of the group says she star­ted rear­ing chicken more than 30 years ago though on a small scale but she has now fully em­braced chicken rear­ing. “I really love this work as it has en­abled me to edu­cate my chil­dren and sus­tain my fam­ily” says Anne.

    The group col­lect­ively owns more than 500 chicken which they man­age jointly. The eggs from the chicken are sold in ho­tels within El­doret town and profits shared based on the shares of the mem­bers. 

     

     

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