After finding the cost of commercial feeds too expensive, poultry farmers are now making their own.

The farmers are buying ingredients used in making the feeds from manufactures and mixing them thus reducing their costs by more than half.

Alfred Opinya of Nairobi West is one such a farmer. Opinya describes his venture as a one-man factory since besides keeping chickens, selling eggs and offering incubating services, he makes feeds, which he also sells to fellow farmers.

“I buy ingredients used in making the feeds, then mix and pack them for sale,” he tells Seeds of Gold.

The ingredients he uses include maize bran, cotton and sunflower seeds, fishmeal and wheat pollard. He buys the ingredients from companies in Industrial Area.

“I pack them in 50kg bags and sell to farmers. I also feed my birds the feeds,” says Opinya. He buys 1kg of maize bran at Sh22, lime at Sh7 and salt at Sh15. Opinya used to buy 50kg layers mash at Sh2,100. It now costs him Sh1,600 to make his own feeds of the same quantity.

The most costly ingredients are chicks’ premix, which goes at Sh500 a kilo, with layers and growers’ premix going at Sh290.

He sells 50kg of layers mash at Sh2,000 while growers and kienyeji at Sh1,750. Chick mash, on the other hand, goes for Sh2,025.

Opinya is a former accountant and says the poultry feeds give him about Sh100,000 a month. He has 600 chickens.

He bought an incubator at Sh100,000 in 2011 with a capacity of 886 eggs. “I charge farmers Sh21 per egg for the 21 days they are in the incubator,” says Opinya.

Jackson Njuguna, a poultry farmer in Kiambu County, also makes chicken feeds. “It is costly to feed chickens every day with commercial feeds. I formulate my own and save up to Sh25,000 a month.”

He uses whole maize meal, brown soya, fishmeal, phosphorus and calcium.

However, Njuguna advises that it is wise to test the formulated meals in a laboratory to ensure they have the right nutrients.

“Do not give your poultry feeds that have not been tested and certified that they have the right proportions of nutrients.”

Njuguna notes he only requires 30 minutes to come up with the right proportions of feeds for his chickens.

“Chick and layers mash have the same calories per kilo. However, the level of protein in chick mash should be about 18 per cent of the total nutrients while that of layers 16 per cent.”

Besides the adequate knowledge in formulating feeds, Njuguna, 60, also has a hatchery where he incubates eggs for other farmers at Sh20 per egg. “I love teaching farmers how they should take care of their poultry. I also help hatch eggs at a fee,” says Njuguna, who has 580 chickens.

The farmer keeps Leghorn chickens, which are considered good layers of eggs, with the capability of laying an average of 300 eggs a year.

Prof Salim Badamana, a poultry researcher at the University of Nairobi, says a farmer who makes his own feeds can only make a profit if they have a large number of birds 0r sell the feed.

“Some of the raw materials are expensive since they are found in Uganda or Tanzania.”

However, he cautions that chicken feeds require a lot of knowledge. This is because any excessive inclusion of minerals and amino acids may intoxicate birds while reduced rations leads to deficiency.

Kinyua Kamaru, the assistant director in the Ministry of Agriculture, says that in formulating feeds, what matters is the ingredients mixed by the farmer.

“It is important to add insoluble grits to the formulations. They include coarse sand, which eases indigestion.”

However, he notes it is important to compare what a farmer has produced with what is recommended. This can be done by taking a sample of the formulated feeds to the laboratory for testing.