When Kennedy Oracha graduated in 2013, he started poultry business with enthusiasm.
He wanted to make quick money and start living a good life. Luckily for him, his father gifted him with a Chinese made incubator that cost Sh95, 000.
“I was excited and was eager to start making money,” Oracha tells Smart Harvest at his Kisumu’s Mamboleo Estate farm and workshop.
With basic knowledge on how the electronic machine worked and a quest for improving its output, he sought the expertise of a friend who was working at Ecochicks Kenya Ltd in Nairobi, an established company in incubation business.
Once he felt confident enough to jump into the deep waters, the 32-year old Horticulture graduate from Bukura Agricultural College, went full throttle.
Heat problems
His new incubator had a capacity of 880 eggs. He bought the eggs from a reliable dealer and started the project.
“I soon realised that the metallic equipment was perpetually heating up due to high temperatures in this region. This increased heat inside the incubator and many of the eggsfailed to hatch because of the heat,” Oracha says.
That got him thinking. He researched and discovered the incubator had some faults. Instead of lamenting, he decided to try and solve the problem, or even come up with a better model.
That is how he started on a journey of making more efficient incubators.
“After learning that heat was affecting the incubator, I wanted to experiment with plywood instead. But I did not know how to install the electronic component. I approached a friend who helped build the mainframe and fix the gadget,” he says.
After a week of training, he built his first fully automated incubator using plywood as the mainframe and used the electronic component of the imported one.
“On testing it, the success rate with 1,320 eggs was 85 per cent. This gave me the confidence to go commercial,” he says.
First big loss
Oracha sold his first incubator for Sh60,000.
It was a loss because the investment and expertise that went into it was worth Sh95,000.
This however, did not dampen his spirits.
“I was actually excited that I could make a machine. I got more funds, bought materials and made more incubators,” he says.
The second time round, he got a breakthrough.
Slowly, word went around that Oracha was making effective incubators at affordable rates and orders started streaming in.
The first order he got was for a 1,050-egg incubator. After finishing that order, an idea came to him on how best to aggressively market the machines.
“So I took photos of the finished product and posted on Facebook to spread the word. I also created a page on Facebook.”
He also printed posters and posted them all over Kisumu city and marketed his business through local radio stations.
And with that, orders started streaming in fast and furious.
“This was the game-changer. More people wanted my machines and as the workload increased, I had to hire and train three people to help me. And when orders are too many, I hired temporary staff,” says Oracha.
He trained the three aides on how to make the mainframe while he handled installation of electronic components and the finer details.
He also spread his wings to satellite townships such as Maseno, Luanda, Homa Bay, Siaya and beyond.
He now plans to make forays into neighbouring counties of Kisii, Busia, Kitale and Kakamega.
So what does he use to make his incubators?
In making the incubators, he sources plywood from local timber yards while the electronic components are sourced from Nairobi.
Given that he sources his materials locally, this makes his incubators up to 30 per cent cheaper than the imported ones which cost between Sh65, 000 and Sh70, 000.
He makes between 10 and 15 incubators every month and has three permanent employees.
He says he can make machines for as many as 5,000 eggs.
He also buys eggs from dealers, hatches them and sells the chicks. He sells a day-old chick at between Sh90 to Sh100. “For people to trust that my machines work, I had to have hatcheries of my own to demonstrate their success rates.”
Awaiting market
He has further built a brooder where the chicks he hatches can be incubated and kept awaiting marketing.And to prove that he is a smart farmer, on the same quarter acre plot, the young entrepreneur has a model farm where he teaches farmers how to cultivate various kienyeji vegetables.
On the same piece, he has a section set aside for demonstration on poultry farming. In that section are several hybrid and kienyeji chicken, a few ducks and four geese.
Even though he appears like he’s ‘arrived’, he says it has not been a walk in the park. “Initially the electronic components failed or were faulty and I had to incur extra costs in get new ones. I have however identified reliable suppliers,”he says. It was not easy convincing people that something locally made was better than the imported ones. Marketing also ate into his revenue streams at times.
And for those who want to be as successful as him his advice is simple: “Do your homework well.”
