I am Dulo Kikkan, born in 1984, married with two children. I live in Muhoroni and have a nursery school within Muhoroni town. Muhoroni is a densely populated town attracting people of different tribes due to its Sugar and biogas factories.

I have not gone far with my education due to financial constraints. My family is not in a position to help since whatever is found is used to educate my three siblings. Am now left to forge my route alone. I was able to take my wife to an ECDE school where she learned to be a nursery school teacher. After her study she was employed for one year and the salary was too little to help much. I then had a plan of small saving to help me start my nursery school.

I joined Zidisha in 2015 when I had only two simple iron sheet rooms I was using as classrooms. Six years down the line with the support of Zidisha loans, I have built 9 permanent class rooms with a good toilet facility for teachers and pupils. As we were closing down due to corona, I had employed 11 teachers, 1cook, 1cleaner and 1 watchman.

As schools were closed for 9 months in Kenya, my school compound was left vacant with no income. In order to survive, I started poultry farming in June 2020.with 100 chicks from the savings I got from the school. By now, I have 250 birds, some of them are laying now. I have now secured 160 hens and enough cocks as my breeding stock. The rest I sell to people for meat. I also want to be collecting eggs and producing chicks for sale. One chick is Ksh.100.This project I am doing it in two classrooms. Meaning I had ready rooms, and enough water from the school tank, so I only buy feeds, vaccines and medication. My wife and two children also work with me in the farm. We don’t employ worker for poultry farm.

MY LOAN PROPOSAL TO BUY AN INCUBATOR

Since I have breeding stock and experience in poultry keeping, I need to buy an incubator so that I use the eggs from my farm to produce chicks for sale. I also need to build a separate house for them because if schools will re-open, then pupils will not have class rooms. I don’t want to end the school business after going this far and this poultry project has also picked up and running very well. Part of this loan I will also use to stock feeds. I am sure of getting Ksh.500 weekly as for now to repay my loan but I will increase it as my income increases. Already some women groups and youth groups are visiting my school to see my project and seek advice on how they can get chicks and do vaccinations. This is already a market for me if I get an incubator. My plan is to have separate farm for poultry project so that I can improve it to buy machine for making feeds after buying incubator. Feeds are very expensive thus finding a way of making it locally will be a breakthrough for me and the community around.

With the profit i got from the school business,i started poultry in May 2020 during lock down.As at now i have 250 birds and 85 layers.I realize that many people come to my farm to ask for chicks including women and youth groups.The breed of my poultry is Kuroilers,they don't brood.I therefore need an incubator to produce chicks.With the advantage of collecting eggs from my farm i can easily progress.Part of this loan i will also use to build separate house for chicken because currently i am using classrooms.This means if schools reopen,pupils will not have enough classrooms.so i need to set up iron sheet house for poultry so that i don't interfere with my school business.This poultry is indeed a profitable business from how i have seen it from may last year,if you help me to buy an incubator i will have made a big step forward.