Doris Richard, a 43-year-old poultry farmer based in Kibwezi West Sub-County of Makueni County has decided to fully venture into the poultry business. This was after making several attempts at other businesses including spare parts, which eventually collapsed. This got her discouraged and resorted to be a stay-at-home wife. While at it, she decided to venture into poultry farming. She borrowed money from merry-go-round groups where she was a member, bought a 68-eggs capacity incubator, a solar, battery and an invertor. Since there was no other hatchery within Mikuyuni Sub-location, she started one at her small capacity using the small incubator, even though the demand for chicks continued to grow beyond the incubator’s capacity.

In March 2024, she joined Kalembwani Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA), a group that Fadhili Trust aided in establishing and overtime, were taught on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, record keeping, loan management, financial discipline and Climate smart Agriculture (CA) amongst others. Following capacity building sessions on diversification into poultry keeping as a climate resilient livelihood in the VSLA groups, she decided to borrow money from the VSLA group as per her shares and savings in a bid to purchase a bigger capacity incubator. Her husband also topped up a considerable amount of money to enable her acquire the 1,056-capacity egg-holder.

As much as Doris was passionate about poultry farming, she used to enjoy minimal profits as her chicks and hens died in great numbers for lack of knowledge in poultry management. However, since joining Kalembwani Shiners VSLA, she is experiencing greater profits whenever she makes sales. None of her chicken are dieing now as she has knowledge on proper housing, feeding, health management, breeding and genetics and record keeping. She is also able to produce insect proteins that supplement as chicken feed, leading to reduced expenses in chicken feeds, she has also put up a perimeter wall to guard her chicken from infections from neighbouring chicken and other poultry farmers call her to consult on matters chicken illnesses. Additionally, they have started practicing fodder production, her husband has deeply developed interest in Climate Smart Agriculture practices (CSA) and has done over 100 Zai pits ready to practice agroforestry, plant pawpaws and pixies amongst other fruits. In the long run, he has a target of doing 500 Zai Pits. Richard Musee, Doris’ husband says he has had a total paradigm shift on farming.

“The last season, on a small piece of land, we planted maize on Zai pits and were able to harvest a considerable number of bags while my neighbors never had any harvest at all. That has made me more motivated to delve deeper into modern ways of farming,” Richard says, evidently carrimg a joy that is almost palpable, a quiet happiness that seems to bubble up effortlessly.

Doris and Richard currently have 70-improved chicken layers, 60 chicks of between 2-3 months and 250 chicks of between 1 day-1week old. On a daily basis, Doris collects 40 eggs from her layers in readiness for hatching and on a monthly basis, they make minimum sales of Kshs.80,000 and roughly a profit of Kshs.40,000. Richard, who works in Mombasa, now finds himself travelling home frequently to join Doris in poultry farming as well as spend time in his agro-forestry efforts. In the very near future, they desire to acquire a stall at Kibwezi Market to consistently be selling chicks as demand is quite high but supply is low. They also anticipate purchasing a vehicle to facilitate logistics whenever there are huge orders. Doris says, they desire to expand the business as previously they have been receiving large orders but they have not been in a position to meet the demand. However, they have been able to sell hens and chicks to as far as Mombasa and Kitui counties. Richard considers their chicken business as one of his retirement plans and is highly encouraging men to support their spouses into economic independence as such ventures are helpful in creating family bonds, cohesion and bringing about development. Also, the couple is grateful that Fadhili Trust officers are always present to give guidance on smart farming and willing to consistently follow through until a VSLA member internalizes a concept.

Social economic empowerment is part of the main components of a 3-year Nature Positive project, supported by Government of Canada, Tear Fund and Canadian Food Grain Bank (CFGB) which is implemented by Fadhili Trust in Kibwezi West Sub- County of Makueni County