Maina Macharia and his mother Teresa Macharia from Chorogi village, Nyeri County own an exotic birds project worth millions. The duo have at least 50 different species of exotic birds in various stages of growth, which they sell to high end resorts in Rift Valley. They include turkey, Egyptian geese and guinea fowls.

Teresa recalls how they started the birds project: “Four years ago, my son who was then working in Mombasa, sent me a small package. Inside was a pair of live guinea fowl. When I asked him what these birds are for, he just told me to rear them like chicken. I did just that.”

For Maina, this was just another boyish hobby — collecting beautiful birds and sending them to his mother.

His mission was just to have a series of beautiful birds dotting their rural farm. But a time progressed, Maina felt like poultry business could be lucrative. As he sought what else to do, he stumbled on the idea of keeping game birds as a commercial venture.

To roll off the project, Maina got a licence from the Kenya Wildlife Service to keep the game birds at the farm.

“Next, I went online and ordered 300 eggs of California geese from the US, which we incubated and hatched,” Maina says. And that is how the exotic bird business was hatched.

“We sell our exotic birds in pairs, male and female therefore we sell each pair at Sh8,000. The returns are encouraging because the running costs are minimal and the birds mature fast,” Maina says.

Maina says rearing exotic birds is one of the best decisions he has ever made. Why? He says exotic bird farming is lucrative, the returns are high and the investment low.

“The beauty of these birds is that they are low maintenance. They eat feeds that a kienyeji chicken eat like sukuma wiki and maize meal. They also do not fall ill often,” Maina says adding, “I breed the birds on an eighth of an acre which is quite small considering the returns. I also focus on pure breeds of chicken such as booted bantum, silky, pekin, kuchi, and black oripington which often have high yields.”

And the winning score is that, demand for the rare birds is high.

“My clientele is high end, people who have everything in life and they just want beautiful creatures to colour their farms. I also have a solid client base from posh resorts in the Rift Valley,” he says.

But the biggest challenge is sourcing for the pure breed of the exotic birds.

Crossbreeding of various game birds has made it difficult to acquire pure breeds.

“I have to travel around the country and sometimes to other East African countries to ensure I have enough exotic birds to sell my clients,” Maina says.

Maina has traveled to Somalia and Uganda where he sources for the the Vulturine guinea fowl and Crown bird respectively. So far he has several species of guinea fowls such as Vulturine, which is the largest species of guinea fowl. He also keeps Royal Blue from Taita Taveta, White fowls, spotted fowls and Spur fowls.

“We have eggs, chicks and grown birds of geese, duck, turkeys, pigeons, chicken, so we can easily breed the birds the clients want,” Ms Macharia says. One of the unique challenges for the exotic bird farmer is that the wild birds often spread diseases to domesticated birds.

“Most water fowl such as ducks and geese are disease carriers which mean when they come in contact with domesticated chicken they transmit communicable illnesses which can wipe out entire flocks. So were are careful not to mix the two,” Ms Macharia says. The game birds also do not reproduce well in captivity therefore breeding the birds is a slow and often unproductive process.

“Exotic birds require their natural habitat so they can lay eggs and reproduce naturally. However living in caged environments stresses them which slows down their reproductive systems,” Maina says.

The beauty of this business is that clients are tempted to buy the birds just by beholding their beauty.

“When an exotic bird customer visits the farm, they may have come for a pair of geese but when they see the other beautiful breeds, they take them too. The sight of the birds is so beautiful the farmers are always tempted to take more.”

On average the Macharias earn Sh15,000 a day from the sale of birds, which easily translates to Sh. 450,000 per month on a good month. Interestingly, the most lucrative of the birds being the vulturine which can fetch as much as Sh40,000 per pair.