Peter Irungu: Farmer Who Shut Down Mini-Supermarket, Found Success In Duck, Turkey Farming

Peter Irungu is a farmer who ditched chicken farming to keep exotic ducks and turkeys.

The farmer who says he has had interest in farming since he was young, was also a businessman running a supermarket in Embakasi, Nairobi.

Peter strated his poultry farming as a side hustle as he continued to run his business before he opted to pursue it fully.

Here is his story as told by WoK.

Background

His interest in farming started early in life and it did not come as surprise when he closed down his business to venture into the world of poultry farming. 

“I was brought up in a family where everything was rotating within farming. My experience with the supermarket was not good so I decided to go into poultry as a side hustle,” he explained.

He started keeping kienyeji chicken but he experienced challenges with finding a profitable market for the eggs.

With high prices of chicken feed, selling eggs at a throwaway price did not make sense and so he started selling the chicken.

“The feeds were expensive and I decided not to keep the chicken for eggs. I started selling the chicken but the market was not good as well,” Peter said.

This is what prompted him to stop keeping chicken and resorted to alternative poultry by keeping kienyeji ducks and turkeys.

“With the bad experience that I had with the chicken, I had already sold whatever I had and turned my focus to ducks and turkeys because when I compare the market, they have a big margin,” Peter said.

He also realized that compared to chicken, the ducks don’t consume much food. While the price of chicken eggs are capped at Ksh 15, ducks eggs sell at Ksh 100.

Ducklings sell for as much as Ksh 300 while chicks go fo Ksh 100.

“I started doing large scale… When I started keeping ducks, I realized that there are many varieties of ducks. Among these breeds there are those that they have a ready market

“Ducks also has ready market for chicks and meat. The demand is high which keeps the price in check compared to chicken,” he added.

The most popular duck breed in Kenya is the pekin duck highly preferred for meat production, both in small scale and large scale.

This is due to the fact that it gains weight fast, reaching up to 3.2 kgs in 6 weeks.

Challenges

Peter highlighted the inability to incubate ducks eggs as among the major challenges when practicing duck farming.

“It has some issues, the success rate is 20-30 percent. It’s advisable to get kienyeji ducks when venturing into this type of farming

“If you want to make a fortune out of duck farming, you have to know how you’ll get your ducklings because using an incubator is a challenge,” he said.