Nature Blog

You are likely to find indigenous chicken or Kuku Kienyeji on almost all menus in the eateries you visit. Many years of research and improvements on indigenous chicken breeds have made them one of Kenya’s most sought-after delicacies and rearing them a popular business undertaking. Improved local chicken breed possesses characteristics like their ability to thrive in different weather conditions, resistance to diseases, and improved growth rates, which allows it to favorably compete with exotic breeds.

The latest entrant into the chicken rearing business is a group of 50 women from Rawalo Village in Gem sub-county, Siaya County. This follows the operationalization of the poultry production unit constructed by Nature Kenya, with funding from the Darwin Initiative, through the Yala Ecosystem Site Support Group. The unit has a capacity of rearing 600 chickens. The three main functions of the unit will be incubation of chicks, rearing of chickens, and collection of eggs for sale. Brooder equipment including feeders and drinkers have been procured and 150 improved kienyeji chicks; 100 White Leghorn and 50 Kuroiler chicks delivered to kick-start the project.

“The first batch of chicks will be reared up to two months before being distributed to beneficiary farmers. Eggs produced by layers will be sold either for consumption or to local farmers for hatching to improve local breeds,” explains Emily Mateche, Nature Kenya’s Project Officer based in Siaya.

Nature Kenya has been at the forefront of initiating, developing, and diversifying sustainable nature-based enterprises in partnerships with local communities in Important Bird Areas (IBAs). The aim of such initiatives is to improve community livelihoods and support local conservation activities of the sites. These enterprises also provide alternatives to unsustainable livelihood options detrimental to the IBAs and have helped reduce over-dependence on nature products for livelihoods. Nature Kenya has successfully implemented similar ventures in Dakatcha Woodland and in Tana Delta.

“Our main objectives for establishing the chicken rearing business is to improve the household diet and income for the members of the local community. We also want to give women an alternative livelihood source to ease their reliance on natural resources to make a living,” says Emily.

To manage the chicken business, the chicken farmers have constituted a Chicken Business Sub-committee whose role is to develop internal business targets for the chicken rearing enterprise and to ensure continuous production of high quality and quantity at all times. Part of the committee’s responsibility will be to mobilize beneficiary chicken farmers to attend training and follow up to ensure skills acquired are shared with other farmers within the community and effectively utilized to enhance productivity in chicken farming.

The unit will also act as a marketing center for chicks, mature chicken and eggs. They will also negotiate for good prices in liaison with Upper Yala Site Support Group, Yala Ecosystem Site Support Group, and other partners including Nature Kenya. Value addition of products through the provision of services such as slaughtering, packaging, and sale of assorted chicken parts to butcheries or mini-markets will also be done by the unit. The beneficiaries have been linked to fish feed producers in Usenge town who will supply poultry feed at a subsidized cost. The fish and poultry feed making machine was procured with support from Nature Kenya and has helped fish farmers in Yala to minimize the cost of their fish production project.

The news of the nonstop return flight of a Common Cuckoo from Kenya to Bangladesh on its way home to Mongolia is one of the highlights of this year’s World Migratory Bird Day. The cuckoo departed from Kenya on April 29, passed through Somalia on May 1, and flew 6,300 kilometers over six and a half days to arrive in Bangladesh on May 6. This shows both the amazing abilities of migratory birds and the effectiveness of technology in helping ornithologists to understand migration patterns.

The cuckoo was named Onon when together with three other Common Cuckoos it was fitted with a transmitter in 2019 by the Mongolia Cuckoo Project. Since June 2019, the project has been giving updates through their website <www.birdingbeijing.com>

The Common Cuckoo left Mongolia in 2019 for Zambia, its wintering grounds. Records of his return journey show that he arrived in Kenya from Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and spent three days in the upper Tana River after which his movement could not be tracked for a week. The next time his movement was picked up was the day he departed from the north eastern part of the country.

Onon flew over Somalia, the Indian Ocean and most of India. From Bangladesh, Onon moved to northeastern India and then to China. By mid-May, the transmitter placed him near Wuhan in Hubei Province in China where he was resting. On May 23, Onon was in Shanxi Province in northern China, still 1,200 km away from Khurkh in northern Mongolia where he was fitted with the transmitter.

Onon is not the only Cuckoo that made headlines. Carlton ΙΙ, another tagged Common Cuckoo, flew 7,500 kilometers from Ivory Coast to England in seven days. The Daily Mail reported that: “Cuckoos normally take two or three weeks to reach the United Kingdom after starting their journeys in the western Africa country of Gabon before stopping in the Ivory Coast. The three-year-old bird becomes the fastest tagged bird to make the trip from Africa to England.”

Since getting tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology in 2018, Carlton has flown over 35,000 Kilometers on his migration between Africa and England.

The World Migratory World Bird Day is celebrated every year in May and October. The day is set aside to raise awareness about migratory birds and to highlight the need for conservation of birds and their habitats. The National Audubon Society – BirdLife in the U.S. – estimates that at least 4,000 species of birds in the world are regular migrants. This represents about 40 per cent of the world’s bird population.

This year’s theme – Birds Connect Our World – was brought to life by the epic journey of these two cuckoos. By tracking their movement and relaying information about their migratory routes, birders were able use technology to appreciate the global linkage created by a single migratory bird. Onon, for instance, crossed through 20 borders connecting 15 different countries at a time the movement of humans within nations has been grounded to a halt following the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus Covid-19.

Some of the widely known hazards faced by migratory birds include high winds, ferocious hailstorms, lengthy sea crossing, thunderstorms and the trapping and killing for their meat. Habitat loss through the conversion of their feeding habitats to human settlement and ill placed infrastructure are some of the emerging bird migration barriers. The online platform created by the two projects offered an opportunity to gather information about the change of routes and the duration of rest taken by the migratory birds. The information will be used to coordinate efforts towards the conservation of some of the ecosystems which are important for the survival of these migratory birds.