Bio­gas powered heater completely does away with brooding cost

                                                                Photo: Laban Robert.

Farm­ers with bio­gas di­gesters can cut elec­tri­city and ker­osene brood­ing costs by using the gas in rais­ing the chicks.

A 6-foot by 3-foot by 4feet struc­ture se­cured by a thin-eyed wire mesh from above the hold­ing area, which is about three and a half feet off the ground. This is ac­cord­ing to a model from Flexi Bio­gas Tech­no­lo­gies.

The gas from the source is con­nec­ted to a per­for­ated pan-covered burner at the base of the struc­ture.

The heat from the burner warms the pan, which also trans­fers the heat to the en­vir­on­ment con­ven­tion­ally.

The struc­tures is covered all around with a trans­par­ent poly­thene sheet. The burner should be placed cent­rally to avoid melt­ing the thick gauge sheet.

Brooders are kept within 32 de­grees Celsius and 34 de­grees Celsius from the first day the chicks are in­tro­duced. The tem­per­at­ure is re­duced slowly until the room tem­per­at­ure by the fourth week, when the chicks have enough feath­ers to help them reg­u­late tem­per­at­ures without ex­ternal help.

 Chick tem­per­at­ure is about 39 de­grees Celsius on the first day but after one week, it raises to about 41 de­grees Celsius, which is the nor­mal body heat for a ma­ture chicken.

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The struc­ture can host 50 chicks. A ther­mo­meter comes in handy in de­term­in­ing the tem­per­at­ure of the brooder. If the tem­per­at­ure goes higher than the re­quired, the poly­thene sheets are opened to allow for more heat to come into the struc­ture.

Sim­il­arly, the gas inlet has a tap that reg­u­lates the flame to in­crease or re­duce the heat out­put.

Flexi Bio­gas Tech­no­logy of­ficer Richard On­diek said the move is one of the com­pany’s pro­jects of help­ing farm­ers util­ise farm wastes to cut down pro­duc­tion costs and boost earn­ings.

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“Such off the power grid en­ergy green solu­tions en­sure that farm­ers are not dis­cour­aged from in­vest­ing in luc­rat­ive ven­tures of their choice. This in­deed is a cost-free way of en­sur­ing that a farmer is bet­ter placed in re­cyc­ling waste for use in en­ergy con­sum­ing activ­it­ies without end-month bills,” On­diek said.

The com­pany fixes bio­gas di­gesters that can handle dung from one to more than five cows.

On­diek can be reached on +254724971553