Deputy President William Ruto is arguably Kenya’s most popular poultry farmer, boasting a farm with thousands of chicken from which he obtains both eggs and meat.
In a past interview with Citizen TV, Ruto’s wife, Rachael, took the station's journalists on a tour of the expansive chicken coop.
Kenya’s second lady disclosed that as of 2015, the couple had pumped over Ksh15 million into their investment.
The house is highly mechanised in terms of the feeding system and waste from the well-fed poultry doubles up as manure for crops.
Rachael also uses the chicken business to empower a local women group which is founded, called the Joyful Women Organisation.
"What happens is that we hatch the day-old chicks and are bought by the Joyful Women so they rear and get layers. We’ve gone ahead to help the women because we realised that many of them are in rural areas and we have many brokers in between,” she narrated.
To beat the middlemen, the organisation collects eggs from its members and uses connections to sell them at market value.
The DP’s state-of-the-art hatchery can accommodate over 20, 000 eggs.
The farm made headlines in April 2019, when reports emerged that some eggs had been stolen.
Four workers were arrested in connection with the theft but upon intervention by ‘powers from above,’ the matter was settled in private.
