Tired of buying expensive animal feed? Try hydroponic fodder

The current drought is a terrible time for farmers.

It means dry farms and low yields and expensive animal feeds. To get around this problem calls for creative alternatives.

One of the ingenious ways farmers are using to beat the drought is hydroponic farming, a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil.

King’ori Mathenge from Githathini in Tetu Sub county, is one such farmer.

Realising it would be expensive to buy his own commercial animal feed, he chose to use this method to grow cheaper organic fodder for his chicken, cows and pigs.

“After clearing campus I looked for a job in vain so I settled on farming. My father gave me a few chicken and cows which I started with. At first, I used to buy the animal feed but I realised it was too expensive. Searching for green pastures or nappier grass for the animals was also a daunting task especially in the dry season like the one we are in,” says the farmer who holds a degree in Commerce from the University of Nairobi.

The farming method is also convenient for him because he can do it on a small piece of land.

“My first job after graduation as an intern in an audit firm made me feel stifled and uncomfortable, I wanted to be outdoors in nature and I realised I wanted to be a farmer,” Mathenge explains.

So he returned home to his village in Githathini in Tetu Sub county on the slopes of the Aberdares forest to venture into farming but soon realised there was not enough space for him to farm on.

“The piece of land was less than an acre and it became evident that I could not farm on a large scale, so I decided to keep chicken and one cow. Hydroponics fit perfectly in that land scarcity situation,” Mathenge says. 

The  27-year-old who embraced this technology three years ago, uses barley, wheat, sorghum and maize which he grows through hydroponics farming to produce fodder for his livestock.

According to the farmer, this fodder is significantly cheaper than the commercial one. He explains the math: “Two kilos of wheat can cost a farmer only Sh60 while the two kilos of layers chicken feed will cost Sh110. I save at least Sh50 per kilo, on feeds,” Mathenge says.

Two kilos of wheat, which will be watered for seven days will produce 15 to 18 kgs of fodder.

While for pigs, 2kg of barley can be watered for six days and produce 12kg of fodder which can be fed to the pigs once a day.

Feeding his animals on the fodder has been so successful, Mathenge has constructed three more greenhouse structures for his hydroponic fodder.

“I started off with 25 chickens, thanks to this technology, now I have up to 320 birds most of which I sold during the December holidays. I also sell one egg at Sh15,” Mathenge says. With the size of land quickly shrinking, this technology is convenient because one can save farming space for livestock.

“I only need a small room or structure about 20 feet by 13 feet to start the hydroponics farm, and with eight shelves of fodder, in that tiny room I can feed, 100pigs, 1,000 chicken, and 12 cows,” Mathenge says.

 How to start

To establish a hydroponics structure, which is similar to a green house, is simple and inexpensive explains the farmer.

A room can be converted and reclining wooden shelves are laid in place. The shelves are covered with polythene to avoid soaking wood in water and causing rotting alternatively use  aluminum sheets though expensive can be used hence no polythene cover is needed.

The next step is to buy 2kgs of your preferred cereal be it wheat, sorghum or barley and soak in a bucket of water for two days.

It is advisable to add a drop of home disinfectant into the water to ensure you kill any harmful bacteria or mould that could affect the cereals.

After the two days, the seeds are laid out on the shelves and watered twice a day so they can germinate and have shoots and roots.

“After four days of watering the seeds the shoots can produce 5kg of fodder. Since one chicken feeds on 200gm of fodder a day, the 5kg is sufficient to feed at least 25 chicken,” he explains.

 The challenges

He says the main challenges for such farming is the competition faced from the large beer making companies who also purchase large quantities of wheat.

“A wheat farmer prefers to sell to the large corporation because they get better prices and they buy the wheat in bulk. So that leaves us small scale farmers out because we only buy about 10kg for fodder. So we are never given priority,” Mathenge says. He adds that wheat is seasonal and the cost of other cereals such as barley fluctuates frequently.

Mathenge’s plan is to share the knowledge with other farmers struggling to buy expensive commercial feed.