Richard Kiprono Mutai from Kapchepkoro village, Sotik, Bomet County, has perfected the art of poultry farming. When we visited his home recently, we found 840 eggs in his three incubators.

In 21 days he expects they will have hatched fetching him Sh84,000 from the sale of the chicks. And the poultry farmer doesn’t just hatch ordinary eggs but improved ones attained by cross breeding kienyeji and exotic chicken.

Mutai says after the chicks are three days old, he sells each for Sh100. After subtracting the cost of production, he makes Sh60 in profit. He says though the bulk of his customers purchase the chicks when they are three days old, others prefer them a little older and he sells them at a higher price. “A month-old chick sells at Sh250 and a three-month-old fetches Sh350,” he says. Mutai says the chickens begin laying eggs at four and a half months and a farmer can expect to collect eggs from the chicken for at least two years.

Mutai also conducts another business on the side. Poultry farmers who have eggs bring them to him for hatching and he charges Sh21 per egg. The 42-year-old farmer began the business by purchasing one hatching machine and he now has three more. “I began with a machine, which I bought for Sh138,000, then I got another for Sh95,000 and a third one, I bought at Sh40,000,” he says.

He says the amount he earns from the venture has enabled him to educate his five children. The farmer who rears the birds on an acre plot says the venture has made him self-reliant and feed his family. Because the cost of chicken feed is prohibitive, he has devised ways to beat this. Mutai feeds the poultry on termites which are cheaper and a good source of proteins.

He shares how he traps the termites: “After indentifying a point where there are termites, I take a clay pot filled with a mixture of cow dung and grass and place it upside down on the area. After three days, the termites migrate to the pot in search of food and that is how I harvest them.”

He also uses sunflowers, cotton seeds, wheat brand and maize germ to supplement the chicken feeds. At Mutai’s farm, a mud-walled house is used to breed the chicks. The farmer says the structure is ideal since it is warm and well-ventilated. “I sprinkle sawdust on the floor to absorb moisture. The chicks’ droppings making the dirt easy to sweep away,” he says. The poultry keeper says though he had many ideas, lack of enough funds limits him.