A cheap brooder for your growing chicks__"Chepkube"

Keeping chicks warm during the night is costly to farmers. A simple brooder solves the problem

  

A fireplace with chick brooder under construction

Joseph Msanii from Matunda, Uasin Gishu, together with some of his col­leagues are passionate about poultry keeping, but keeping the chicks warm has been a problem for them. With the rising feed prices, an addition of charcoal or kerosene into the budget reduces their profit margin.

A cheaper option

However, the farmers’ group got inspi­ration from Chepkube, a specially modi­fied chamber where food is placed after cooking to keep it warm, which is common in households of people from the Kalenjin community. They decided to combine and improve the two ideas and came up with a better version of the two.

A home-made brooder. Energy that would otherwise be lost after cooking is used to keep the chicks warm.

Cooking heat keeps chicks warm

“When cooking, the jiko emits a lot of heat which if not saved is lost, we had to look for a simple way of saving the heat and use it later in the chick brooder to provide warmth for the chicks,” says Joseph Msanii. “The frame of the brooding chamber is made of wooden and metal bars that form the cooking area. Iron sheets on the upper part help to trap the heat and transmit it to the lower section because of their ability to conduct heat. Bricks are used for the walls and roofing done with mud used as mortar to hold the bricks together.

When cooking, the heat emitted is trapped in between the roof and the floor of the brooder. This heat is retained and saved for later use. If a farmer cooks three times in a day, the heat produced is enough to keep the chicks warm the whole night. On the wall where the jiko is built, a hole is made through, so that when there is sunshine, the farmer allows the chicks to go out through it.

Brooder makes work easier

The opening is covered at night in order to preserve the heat. On the outer side of the wall, there is a resting area for the chicks commonly referred to as a trapezium, made up of wood and wire mesh with a door at the top. The trape­zium protects the chicks from preda­tors. ”Before I acquired this brooder it was really hectic,” says Sabina Ngare a farmer in Matunda,”I had to heat water and put it in bottles and then place them in baskets together with the chicks to keep them warm. But now with this brooder, keeping chicken has become so easy, all I have to worry about is what to feed the chicks. ”The newly improved version serves as a jiko, with three cooking places and just under it is the brooding chamber for the chicks, which in this case acts as the brooder. The brooder differs with the oven incubator because it is only used to keep the chicks warm. It is not meant for hatching.

The farmers’ group has managed to make 11 brooders since the start of the project. According to those who are already using this brooder, the brooder has drastically reduced the cost of buying charcoal or using elec­tric heaters to keep the chicks warm.

For more information you can contact Joseph Msanii on 0702 878 679