By Lyzzie Owade

Mary Wanjiku was close to abandoning her poultry business in Makao, Nakuru County, as egg production and sales tumbled from her underfed chickens on soaring food costs: until she started using a weed for feed instead, and turned everything around.

‘’I had reached a point where I wanted to quit poultry farming and start growing vegetables’’ she said, talking to FarmBizAfrica from Makao. Spending around Sh2500 a week on commercial feeds, she just could not keep up with the spend.

“It forced me to reduce the amount of feed by a quarter so that all my chicken could get food, not as before, where 7 chickens could feed on 1kg a day.”

Her egg production fell. “In a pen of 20 chickens only eight produced eggs daily. This was low compared to when I started where I could collect up to 12 eggs a day.”

Customers started rejecting her eggs, as well. She had been supplying to the local shops in Makao centre. “The customers used to complain to the shop owners that the yolk was white and not the colour of the kienyeji eggs. Three shops stopped me from supplying eggs since there was no difference from the caged eggs.”

From supplying up to five trays of 30 eggs each a day in the shops, “it reached a point where the supply reduced up to two trays a day as people were rejecting my eggs. The local buyers, too, wanted the price to be reduced as the yolk was not like the kienyeji chicken.”

‘’I used to sell one egg at Sh20, but the customers were then complaining and they wanted to buy it for Sh15. Even my neighbours, who knew I was rearing kienyeji, also wanted the price to be reduced,” she said.

‘’This kept on happening until last year when I started selling the chicken, I was to sell all the chicken,” she said.

Until sh tried to explain to one of her customers the challenge she was facing with her layers. “She said that I should start adding gooseweed to their feed everytime. The customer explained to me what she does and she was also having a machine to cut the weeds in smaller pieces,” said Mary.

“I didn’t have the cutting machine, hence I just cut the weed manually with a knife and added it to the feed. Since then I only spend like Sh2500 on feeds in two weeks,” she said.

“Gooseweed is always available in all the farms around my area,” she said, so she hasn’t had to spend anything for it. 

“Many farmers always like when you are cutting the weed on their farms since it is as if you are clearing the farm for them.”

And she can use as much as she can gather. “In one kiligram of the commercial feed, just add any amount of gooseweed as you can, there is no proper measurement,” she said.

‘’Sometimes the area gets dry, in this season you have no option but to look at where you can get rejected kales to add to the feed too, just to lower the cost of the feed for the chicken, just to  retain the colour of the yolk,’’ she said,

But gooseweed is perfect for all the times she can get it. It contains vitamins, which helps in boosting the chickens immune system and increases their egg laying, and minerls like calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium, which are essential building blocks for the hen’s body and egg formation, ensuring the shells are thick and strong to prevent breakage.

It has now been seven months since Mary started feeding her chickens with the gooseweed. “The yolk is not white, as people were telling me, and the supply I am making to the shops has increased from five trays, as it was before my troubles, to now seven trays a day.”

“In a pen of 20 chickens, now I collect upto 16 eggs in a day and the yolks are now yellow as customers wanted  to see on kienyeji chicken,” she said.