How many of you Ktalkers are into agribusiness? You know, approaching farming/ agriculture as a business?
There’s great potential when you mix technology, agriculture and business. This potent mix when done with the seriousness it deserves will result in a person smiling all the way to the bank.
High value horticultural crops grown following a cropping calendar using technology like green houses and drip irrigation and of course following a proper spraying regime. There’s also the livestock aspect. Dairy farming, Pig rearing, poultry for meat and eggs, fish for fillet and fingerings. There’s also the non-conventional livestock like Ostrich rearing, Ornamental birds etc.
One thing though, agribusiness is not like the “Pharmacy” business where you make millions overnight. Here you use the power of compounding and you’ll be one happy person.
Naaaam!! Nimetega skio.
My wife is managing our poultry business… we have a mid-sized hatchery doing about 3000 chicks a month and also 1000 mature chicken a month… It’s bringing in more than I get from my work.
Marry another one, I tried quails and failed.
You tried coding them into maturity without feeding them? :D:D:D:D:D:D
:D:D
@4makind, that is sufficient proof that it’s very hard to get richer than your employer!
Very impressive but just imagine what the other people in that value chain get just by moving one step up in that chain? The hawkers who boil and sell an egg at 20/=, hotels frying and selling the same @50/=, those who dry and sell egg powder etc. That’s vertical integration and the limit will be how badly you want to get there.
Just picture yourself with 10,000 layers, manufacturing your own on- farm feeds. @90% laying rate, we’re talking of ~2.88M per month. Less about 50% expenses and you’ll be too busy to be a Ktalker. Of course you get to 10,000 birds in a planned manner, gradually gaining experience as time goes goes by.
can you create a thread detailing your journey on how you started, challenges faced etc kinda isht. maybe can inspire us too
The quail craze was about breeding. Consumers were very few. Economics I talks of Supply and Demand. For quails, Supply was literally forcing Demand to “behave”. It also had all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme where you get in early, pick n cash your cheque and the late comers left carrying the bounced cheques.
Hapo naku support bwana Avicii
@Deorro … It’s been a long journey of about 3 years now. Between 2009 and 2013 I was working for an NGO promoting women and youth entrepreneurship in Tz and I could always be amazed by the profound changes that 20 or 30 chicken would make in a household. When I returned to Kenya in 2013 I was posted in Embu which is near my shags in Mwea. My wife was still working in Nairobi but for the sake of our marriage she quit her job and we moved our family to Mwea. We started with 300 Kari kienyeji chicks in August 2013 and by Dec 13, over 250 chicken died from diseases. We almost quit but then decided to give it 1 more trial, so started again this time with 800 Kuroiler chicks from Uganda in Jan 2014 and I also poached a farm hand from a poultry farm in Thika. This guy has really helped us. This batch did well and started laying in July last year…by August last year we were getting 8 trays of fertilized eggs per day, but the prices for eggs was not as good as we had expected. We got an 5280 egg capacity incubator in October last year and started hatching eggs. It was very difficult in the beginning as we had not established a market for the chicks and we were getting about 500 chicks every week and only selling about 100. I remember last year in December we had over 3500 chicks of different ages and no place to take them to. It was just hell!!! we were forced to give out over 2500 chicks for free as we could not sustain them… it was a good learning point because we now hatch on orders and we also expanded our chicken bandas so that we take in 1100 new chicks every month which we rear and sell at the age of 4 months as mature chicken .
In hindsight I was lucky that I had space, capital and a devoted manager… hii kazi huwezi fanya kwa simu!!!
This quail biashara was doomed to fail from the start… My credo has been always to produce what majority of the people consume. People are resistant to change and more so in regard to their palates… Watermelon is the the only new food/fruit that I have seen adopted by a huge number people in my lifetime
You need to factor in costs my friend… I always have over 5000 birds in my farm at any 1 time and let me tell that it’s no joke… chicken consume a lot feed, I no longer buy feed from factories but source our raw materials from Tz- seed cake, maize bran, dagaa…, we have 12 full time employees… electricity,… vaccines and medications ( a dose of Marek’s vaccine for 1000 birds costs 15,000)…, The sales turnover is high but the profits are not more than 500k for all that work
@4makind how intense is the competition from imported chicken products such as eggs.Second question, which one production factor do you think is the heaviest burden to poultry farmers.
Link omwami,nimechoka na hii kibarua?
@ 4mankind, I’m planning to start with five hundred one day old chicks ,most probably kienyeji kari improved and to be housed in battery cages when they reach layering stage,peya mimi mawaidha sir plus the approximated capital .
A bag of potatoes in kinangop weighs approx 200kgs and costs at best 6,000.
A packet of crisps weighing 50gms costs 30-50.
Do the maths.
I have an idle 40x80 plot bang in the middle of Nairobi. Fully serviced, water, electricity, sewer are all available. If I need to rear chicken there, what other challenges am I likely to encounter. Na si mambo na kanjo, those ones I know how to take care of them. Anyone who has reared chicken in the city?
hii ni matusi high class
good work but before you show your employer the middle finger make sure you triple those numbers
you need sewer for chicken?
on a serious note,you need to hit it big. you even need how to make your own customized feeds