Rearing chicken is a very common business idea that most people seek to try out at one point in their investment path.
Key Takeaways
- Shortcuts will cost you a lot more money than doing things the right way
- Have double the amount you plan to invest (the extra money is an emergency fund)
- Be proactive in preventing known diseases
- Benchmark with other poultry farmers in your area
- Focus on one breed when starting
- Consider poultry farming a full-time job and give it your full attention (especially if you are new to it)
If you research well enough you will find an equal measure of success stories and failure stories.
A successful example is an ex-K24 reporter who started his own chicken farm worth Kshs. 800,000 that went on and succeeded.
Failure examples are a lot more including people that have lost hundreds of thousands doing the same thing.
Here are five things you need to at least know before investing your money.
Costs are higher than you think
Investing in chicken in Kenya is not just about buying chicks and their feeds, there are a lot more costs that keep cropping up in the processes.
The reason most people fail is that they assume they can take a shortcut by avoiding certain expenses.
In the actual sense, if you are keeping chicken at a large scale, you should calculate the costs and then double them to get the actual figure.
The initial investment costs like building, getting chicks, feeds, electricity, etc. may remain constant but then supplementary costs are never constant.
These supplementary costs include labor, veterinary checks, market research, disease prevention, transportation, insurance, and other related costs.
You should be prepared to spend more money at any given time – an emergency fund.
So, how much does it cost to start a poultry farm?
A medium-sized poultry farm with about 600 chickens in Kenya costs approximately Kshs. 1,610,236 to set up and operate for 20 months. This cost includes buying one-day-old chicks, chicken feed, labor, land leasing, veterinary services, marketing, licenses, and chicken pen construction.
Below is the cost breakdown of a farm with 600 chickens.
You can use this table to approximate how much it would cost for a lower or higher number of chickens.
| Poultry Farm Item | Cost in Kshs. |
| Purchase of 600 one-day-old chicks | 60,000 |
| Chicken feed for 20 months | 607,236 |
| Operational costs for 20 months | 133,000 |
| Vaccines and other medication | 30,000 |
| Marketing cost | 100,000 |
| Licenses and business permits | 30,000 |
| Leasing farmland | 300,000 |
| Building costs | 150,000 |
| Miscellaneous | 200,000 |
| Total Cost | 1,610,236 |
One disease away from losing your investment
Disease in chicken spreads really fast.
You may have one chicken infected in the morning and by evening it will have infected 10 other chickens. A disease can thus affect an entire farm of 200 chickens in just 24 hrs.
You, therefore, need to continuously be aware of potential diseases, and their symptoms and have solutions ready at hand.
These diseases include Fowl Pox, Avian Influenza, Infection Bronchitis, and Infection Cozyra among others.
Additional research on diseases common to the specific area you want to rear chicken is also important.
Visit a few neighbors and ask around about which disease has killed chickens in the past. The agriculture officer in the area can also be a good source of information.
However, below are four of the most common chicken diseases in Kenya.
| Disease | Symptoms |
| New Castle Disease | A decline in egg production, coughing and sneezing, nasal discharge, diarrhea, sitting on back joints, walking backward and in circles, tucking head between legs, droopiness, leg paralysis, head swelling, and twisted neck. |
| Gumboro | Prostration, whitish and watery diarrhea, cloaca inflammation, and solid vent feathers |
| Fowl Typhoid | Ruffled feathers, paleness, loss of appetite, and orange-ish diarrhea |
| Fowl Cholera | Yellow-ish or green-ish droppings, droopiness, sleepiness, and fever |
Self-hatching versus buying chicks
It is advisable that if you are starting at a small scale, hatch the chicks yourself and grow the numbers with time.
This will save you on costs and will let your chicks build better immunity for the exact conditions of the place they get hatched.
This is a rule of the thumb and not an absolute must.
Buying chicks is more expensive because you not only spend on the chicks themselves but also have to get everything ready from the moment they arrive.
You should comfortably do this if you have previous experience rearing chicken and therefore just replenishing your stock.
Kienyeji versus Kroiler versus Broiler
The choice between these three is really important from the onset.
| Chicken Type | Definition |
| Kienyeji | Kienyeji is the Swahili word for Free Range Chicken. Kienyeji chickens are kept in large parcels of land and allowed to roam freely into bushes and under trees/thickets in search of food. |
| Kroiler/Kurolier | Kroliers are a cross-breed of Kienyeji and Broiler chicken. They are reared for both meat and egg production and try to combine the benefits of free-range birds and confined birds. |
| Broiler | Broilers are raised specifically for meat production. They are subjected to accelerated maturing techniques to reach their slaughter weight sooner (4 to 7 weeks). |
It is easier to pick one breed and focus on it rather than mixing them up.
This is because each breed has specific demands in terms of building, feeding, medicine, monitoring, and selling.
Kienyeji chickens are for instance better suited for large farms with plenty of natural chicken food like leftovers, worms, greenery, etc which are mostly found in rural settings.
They demand little attention and have lower chances of getting diseases due to their higher resistance.
They however take longer to mature but this is compensated back with their higher market prices.
Each chicken category will also generate different amounts of income. Kienyeji is the most expensive in the market, then Kroiler and then Broilers.
In most cases, Broilers are the most work to maintain and they need very specific care for them to be profitable despite their high demand in most Kenyan markets.
It will be a lot of work
Think of rearing chicken as a full-time job and not a side hustle.
Most people lose their money in chicken farming because they lack enough time to be there physically to monitor the performance of the investment.
Delegating to a farmhand or family member also does not most of the time because they may not be as keen as necessary in taking care of the chicken.
To be successful, you may need to be physically present at the farm and keep meticulous records of costs, revenues, and what is working and what is not working.
This way, you can scale up easier and create a system that all chickens follow from when they hatch to when they get sent to the market.
It is only at the point where there is a system that your farm specifically follows that you then can delegate responsibility to someone else since they will have written down guidelines to follow every day.
While these five things may not be an absolute guarantee of success in chicken farming in Kenya, they will get you closer to success.
