Profile of the Kondele Poultry Women Group

The Kondele Market Traders Women group was formed and registered in 1989 under the Ministry of Culture and Social services. Membership was drawn from informal traders in Kisumu city but a majority of them come from Kondele market.  In 2005 the group ventured into poultry farming under the guidance of Science Product Centre (SPC), Kisumu.

During the post-election violence (2007/2008), Kondele was the epicentre of skirmishes where group members based in the area had their chicken looted and premises razed to the ground. This experience demoralised members to an extent that membership dropped from 45 to 12.

In 2008, the group was identified by the Partnership for Safe Poultry in Kenya (PSPK), among other groups in the Western/Nyanza regions of Kenya to be trained on biosecurity protocols.

Most people in Kenya are adopting commercial poultry keeping as a means of generating additional income. In the past few years the commercial poultry production has been on a steady growth despite the numerous challenges. These challenges include rising cost of poultry feeds, fluctuations in the supply of day old chicks, low quality poultry health inputs, insufficient knowledge in poultry diseases management and poor access to market due to unsynchronized commercial poultry production.

One of the major challenges that cut across both the exotic and indigenous poultry farming is the issue of disease control and management. Most farmers have not adopted the practice of disease control interventions such as vaccination and proper poultry management practices. This is especially so amongst indigenous poultry farmers who think that vaccinations should only be for exotic commercial birds. This article will focus on the management of New Castle disease.