How my Sh. 25 million automatic chicken farm works

Jibek Luusa, the co-director and proprietor of a poultry farm that is located in Kyawango village, Machakos County.
She has invested in a Sh25 million poultry facility and she hopes it will significantly multiply her yields. The technology dubbed Environmentally Controlled House (EC House), offers optimum environment for light, temperature and humidity for thousands of birds for maximum production.

She shared her poultry farming journey with a local farming journal known as Smart Harvest:
“I began with this makeshift structure. But the birds kept on getting sick and dying because of the unfavourable environment like cold and poor ventilation,” she says pointing at the dilapidated structure where she started from. It was pure stress, she says. “It was hectic with little returns owing to the many challenges I was experiencing,” Luusa said. Every day, she would be losing chicks to diseases. These frustrations drove her to invest in a modern chicken farming unit.

After doing intense research on revolutionary poultry rearing systems, she learnt of the automatic poultry farms (Environmentally controlled houses).  “This EC House is 120 by 50 metre structure and it cost me an arm and a leg. But the good thing is that it is worth every coin. It is like a perfect poultry house that ensures birds are so comfortable they give the farmer maximum yields,” says Luusa. Luusa who is married to a Kenyan — Mr Marshal Luusa — who co-owns the venure, made forays in poultry farming in 2015 with 2,000 broiler chicks.
“EC House can hold 40,800 broiler chicks. It is environmentally safe and maximizes on yields.”

Farmers can check on factors such as temperature, lighting and humidity and regulate them in line with best practice for high yields. “The environment can control spread of diseases when people enter the unit unlike other traditional non controlled poultry systems,” Denz says.
Inside it, it has fans that run continuously, coolers and feeder pans that refill whenever they run empty. “The technology is so sophisticated in the event the system does not work, the person in charge is notified via their smart phone,” Denz says.
It also cuts on labour costs since it is fully automated. A maximum of three people can work in the EC house, he says. This saves the farmer on labour costs. This is a plus to farmers like Jibek who previously had 15 permanent employees, eating into the profit margins. According to Denz, though the initial investment is prohibitive —Sh25 million—there is a handsome return on investment in less than two years.

“Returns are guaranteed if you do your things right. This is because it only requires a farmer Sh170 to feed one bird and another Sh4 for medication which includes vaccination and Vitamins.

Source: https://biznakenya.com/

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