Poultry Keeping and Management: A Flexible Learning Course

Abstract

Through the INVEST Africa partnership of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), representatives of Thika Technical Training Institute and Rift Valley Technical Training Institute in Kenya developed a course on poultry keeping for non-formal community training.

Poultry keeping is one of the most popular forms of business among small-scale farmers. This is because poultry requires little capital, is easy to rear and easy to manage. Poultry keeping thus provides farmers with a great opportunity to start an income generating activity.

The aim of this course is to provide learners with all the knowledge and skills needed to raise poultry for meat and eggs and manage a small-scale commercial poultry business. This main target group of this course is farmers who are interested in starting a poultry business. However, extension workers and other stakeholders who are interested in working with small-scale poultry farmers will also benefit.

There are many types of poultry but in this course chicken will be focused on. The course will start by looking at the economics of poultry production so that learners can make an informed decision about the viability of this business before starting. It will then discuss various important aspects of poultry farming, such as poultry housing, types of chicken breeds, brooding, feed management, health management, and poultry production and marketing.