Why keeping local chicken will get you Broke
it’s not a wise idea to keep local chicken for commercial reasons mainly because they grow too slowly. it will take up to 6 months to start laying or even longer.
I advice farmers to either go for improved kienyeji, commercial layers or broilers.
Improved kienyeji can be slaughtered at three months,commercial layers will start laying after 18 weeks(4 1/2 months) for broilers it takes only 6 weeks to attain up to 2kg of weight. some people even feed for 30 days.
Pure kienyeji takes longer to grow u cant use commercial feeds as compared to commercial birds.
coz they are not feeding on the commercial feed you need large space for free-ranging or semi free-ranging, which is expensive for space and fencing.
local birds have a low feed conversion rate compared to commercial birds. i.e it takes 2.5 to 3 kg to feed the broiler as compared to 8kg for one kienyeji bird. you will spend more.
it’s easy to control diseases with commercial birds since they are housed properly unlike free-range chicken which can be affected by any animal or bird that may carry a disease from wherever and bring it to your farm.
guys if you do not have acres of land please avoid local birds,but I don’t discourage you to have a few at the compound.
