Kenyan Chicken farming information ----Incubators

Well, if you want to make money in Kenya as a chicken farmer, you need an egg incubator. This is because you can control your chick supply and the cost of the supply. There are many sources of fertilised eggs. Dorep and Kenchic being one of them. You just need to once in a while get good eggs/chicks from these organisations to start the breeding yourself. 

I woke up positive, the day was bright. I think the sun is up at just before 6 and goes down at almost 7 in the evening. I suppose this is what we would call summer, but then again the sun crosses the equator twice a year I think 

Anyway, I made a phone call to go see the state of the art automatic incubator which I was proud of. I made it there about 1 hour late but I did let the guy know he didn’t have to wait for me, but he insisted on waiting for me.  

The state of the art incubator cost KES 65,000 and is the cheapest in the market. They all kind look the same. They are basically a box with a thermal stat and water tube at the bottom couple trays to hold eggs and an on and off switch. They have painted it blue which I suppose is supposed to show a professional job. The machine operates on a normal 100 watts bulb and a computer fan. Clearly the KES 65,000 (approx £500) is too much for this box. At one point I thought of saying this is a cheat, and then I remembered this is something Mike would actually build for me. Why buy one expensive one, whilst I could have mike make one for me and maybe build a business around it? Obviously I would change a few things, but I would not include a mini computer. The fact is that this is a machine which could be used to eradicate poverty. Better yet use it together with the DOREP farmers.  

I also collected eggs from DOREP offices for incubation. Am not sure an Incubator is the way forward without a power backup, plus the machines are just a heavy capital outlay for what they are.