Mukaaya hatches 40,000 chicks every month

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For the tenth year running, Vision Group, together with the Embassy of the Netherlands, KLM Airlines, dfcu Bank and Koudijs Animal Nutrition, is running the Best Farmers Competition.

The 2025 competition runs from April to November, with the awards in December. Every week, Vision Group platforms will publish profiles of the farmers. Winners will walk away with sh150m and a fully paid-for trip to the Netherlands.

In 2016, Zubairi Laliyo Mukaaya, 51, started poultry farming with 10 local birds, ferrying the eggs to hatcheries in Mukono municipality, before breeding the chicks at home in Nankandulo village, Magogo sub-county in Kamuli district.

Today, Mukaaya is the director of Bakusekamaja Poultry Farm, Nankandulo, with about 45,000 birds and three incubators from which he hatches 40,000 chicks per month.

He also has four fish ponds, six acres of coffee, two acres of maize, a half-acre of banana plantation and 20 hybrid goats.

How he started

Aged 17, Mukaaya dropped out of school in Primary Three at Nankandulo Primary School, and joined his father, Laliyo Mwase Bitote (now deceased), to do fishing in Lake Kyoga and Lake Victoria.

Mukaaya found the fish business unprofitable and at 25, he quit it and returned to Nankandulo. He ventured into buying and hawking ripe coffee berries from villages around Kisozi sub-county.

His capital included a rickety bicycle and a portable weighing scale. He sold both dry and pulped berries in Buwenge town council.

There were many traders and thus Mukaaya found the venture unprofitable, so he quit. He opened a retail shop in Kamuli town, which collapsed.

He returned to coffee, this time buying husks from the millers in Buwenge town council for sale to bulk buyers in Mukono municipality.

These sold the husks to livestock farmers and agricultural entities. Once as he hawked coffee husks, he visited a poultry farm in Mukono municipality, where the proprietor, John Mukasa (now deceased), interested him in the enterprise.

Mukaaya heeded the call and started with one local hen, which was fertilised by a neighbour’s cock. It laid eight eggs and hatched them.

He took keen care of the eight chicks, which matured and multiplied to 70 within eight months. As the numbers increased, he became eligible for support from the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), which gave him 300 chicks and start-up feeds at no cost.

It was an initiative by the Government to draw rural community members into farming to fight poverty.

Within five months, Mukaaya says, the birds had started laying eggs, which he took to hatch at an incubator in Mukono municipality, about 80km away.

By 2008, he had 520 birds, attracting a visit by the former Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga who was then on a NAADS beneficiaries’ performance tour.

“She asked me how I hatch the chicks and I explained that I had to take eggs to Mukono,” Mukaaya said.

Kadaga promised to lobby a sh15m hatchery from the NAADS secretariat, which was fulfilled in 2011. She also tasked the secretariat with providing a power line to the farm.

When he got the NAADS hatchery, his production capacity was 3,000 chicks per week. In the meantime, his birds’ population went up to 8,000 from 1,000.

To handle the higher supply of eggs, between 2011 and 2018, Mukaaya bought two more hatcheries at sh30m each. Today, he has a stock of 45,000 birds which lay 8,000- 11,000 eggs per day to sustain the three hatcheries whose production is 10,000 chicks per week.

To ensure smooth production, he set up a brooder where the chicks are received and vaccinated to boost immunity.

Mukaaya rears 20,000 fish in two ponds.

A permanent worker is assigned to the hatchery to ensure all technical faults are rectified promptly to guard against losses. An off-shoot of the business is the sale of off-layers.

The bird species on the farm include the improved saso (dark brown) breed and the grey-spotted kuroilers. Each chick is sold at between sh2,500 and sh10,000, depending on its age.

Cocks go for sh45,000 to sh50,000. Richard Musenero, the Kamuli district production and marketing officer, says Mukaaya is the leading supplier of the saso and kuroiler birds in Busoga and eastern Buganda regions.

The farm also sells part of the chicken droppings to farmers as organic manure.

Each sack costs between sh15,000 and sh20,000. The rest of the droppings are used to fertilise Mukaaya’s vast maize, beans and coffee shambas.

In the feeds department, three youths mix bran, broken maize from the farm and coffee husks with the Koudjis concentrates. Mukaaya says the farm mixes their own feeds to cut costs.

Poultry project

The proceeds from six acres of coffee also support the poultry enterprise when need arises, in terms of buying additional feeds, especially when the maize is scarce.

In the maize and coffee shambas, contours and basins were dug to retain rainwater, then they are mulched using sugarcane leaves and compressed sugarcane stems.

Farm expenses

Mukaaya spends sh7.5m on 50 bags of feeds (maize bran, Koudjis concentrates), sh500,000 on drugs and vaccines, sh2.2m on fuel for generators, motorcycles and tuk-tuks and sh3.6m on workers’ wages and feeding.

Marketing

The farm’s clients include farmers in Busoga sub-region as well as from Kayunga, Buikwe and Nakasongola districts.

Traders and hotels are part of their daily customers. To serve his clients well, Mukaaya opened a WhatsApp group and a TikTok account to update clients on delivery schedules.

“I have over 2,500 followers,” Mukaaya says. He adds that he was forced to adopt the technologies although he is semi-illiterate.

Agronomic practices

To manage disease outbreaks, Mukaaya applies timely vaccination, routine supply of water infused with antibiotics, aerated shelters and isolation of diseased birds in a “sick bay”.

To ensure a clean environment, the chicken droppings are kept in a wastes store, about 30 metres away. The entrances to the chicken houses have footbaths filled with a solution that has a disinfectant.

Best practices

Mukaaya keeps the eggs and chicks production records, daily sales, gross and net income and expenses on feeds/ concentrates. The records also capture costs of drugs, antibiotics, fuel and maintenance of automobiles, generators and workers’ wages.

To guard against theft, Mukaaya installed CCTV cameras. This move reduced fish thefts by 95% compared to when he hired night watchmen. To ensure a consistent supply of water, he has 10 tanks in which he stores rainwater.

He has supplemented this with a borehole in his backyard. When financial need arises, Mukaaya accesses loans from commercial banks ranging between sh40m and sh50m.

To ease transportation on the farm, he has a tricycle, motorbike and a vehicle. Learning never ceases, so he invests in knowledge, attending annual Vision Group Harvest Money Expos, visiting prominent farms and attending agricultural engagements in Jinja and Kampala cities.

He also reads farming literature in Harvest Money and Enkumbi Terimba in New Vision and Bukedde respectively.

Family involvement

The farm employs eight permanent and 10 casual workers. Permanent workers get sh150,000 per month and the casuals sh50,000 to sh70,000, depending on the tasks done.

Mukaaya’s family members are also involved in the farm. He says his wife and the children support the workers in picking the eggs, giving the birds water, vaccinating the chicks and keeping watch at the hatchery.

Monica Mukanza, Mukaaya’s wife, has learnt how to detect the technical faults in the hatchery.

Faruk Mukaaya, 23, one of the children, says he is aware that they went to good schools because of the farm.

Achievements

Attributing his success to hard work, commitment and public trust, Mukaaya has registered big strides in life.

“I now have thousands of friends, including local leaders, MPs, commissioners, resident district commissioners and business moguls,” he says.

Having dropped out of school in Primary Three, he resolved that would not happen to his children. Indeed, today, two of them are civil engineers, one is a nurse and another a cleaning specialist.

Other achievements include the construction of a residential house at the farm. He also bought 16 acres of land and has rentals in Jinja city.

Social impact

Mukaaya’s farm is a centre where upcoming and prospective farmers are trained in modern practices and techniques.

Other trainees include college students, village farmer groups, prominent leaders and farming institutions including Makerere University, who frequent the farm to learn modern techniques.

Scovia Nabirye, the women chair of Magogo sub-county, attributes the mushrooming poultry enterprises in the area to the trainings at Bakusekamaja Farm.

To promote poultry and empower communities, Mukaaya allows farmers to bring their eggs to the hatchery.

In 2017, the Kyabazinga of Busoga, William Gabula Nadiope 1V, paid a visit and appreciated the way the farm has changed the livestock game in Busoga.

Mistakes made

The grave mistakes Mukaaya made at the start was not checking the incubator regularly. It overheated and he lost 10,000 chicks.

In another incident, over 15,000 chicks died in an old model hatchery. The lesson he learnt is that hatcheries need 24- hour surveillance to identify technical faults and have them addressed swiftly.

What makes him tick? Mukaaya has built his wealth on three pillars, that is, being focused, hard work and honesty.

“Clients trust me and send millions of money on my phone. When the chicks hatch, I call them to pick. That honesty and hard work is part of what has made me what I am,” he says.

Challenges

The hurdles at the farm, Mukaaya says, include power outages which lead to an expenditure of at least sh200,000 on fuel for the generators.

The thefts in the coffee shambas where there are no cameras as well as disease outbreaks whose management comes at a high cost are the other challenges at the farm.

Plans

Mukaaya plans to take the farm to heights by increasing production by three-fold and becoming the most reputable chick producer in Busoga and eastern Buganda.

To cater for this, he plans to construct more shelters and set up more maize shambas.

“If I can find a stable market, I will extend the value addition chain to process the eggs into powder,” he says.

Fish farm

Mukaaya is also involved in fish farming with four ponds, each measuring 10x30 metres. Each has 5,000 catfish.

“I was inspired by a friend to venture into fish farming. I started with one pond in 2014, and the first harvest fetched sh800,000,” he says.

In 2018, he dug three more ponds, which host 20,000 fish altogether. To excavate the ponds, he used hoes and spades and also hired manual labour.

The labourers and fingerlings costs were sh500,000 and sh1.25m respectively.

Monica Mukanza, 45, Mukaaya’s wife, says the fish enterprise is less cumbersome than others on the farm because there are no treatment costs incurred. The only costs are fingerlings and feeds, part of which are chicken droppings.

“We feed them once a day,” she says. From the two harvests annually, he bags sh16m.