Farmers are nowadays adapting to modern ways in order to maximize yield from their venture. With farming practices becoming a craze for the youth, various techniques are being incorporated in order to get the maximum profit within the shortest possible time.
Kenyans.co.ke takes a look at some of the processes adopted by farmers that tend to amount to millions in profits.
Selective Breeding
This involves choosing animals with particular characteristics in order to breed together and produce offspring with more desirable characteristics. Various methods can be used to achieve this: from high tech processes such as genetic engineering or in-vitro fertilization to affordable options that involve controlling the mating of animals based on their characteristics.
Three approaches for farmers to selective breeding include outcrossing, linebreeding and inbreeding. Outcrossing involves mating two animals that are unrelated in order to get increased genetic variation. Linebreeding is a highly strategic process that involves breeding together distant relatives
In order to acquire certain desirable traits while also locking out health diseases that result from purebred animals. Inbreeding involves mating two directly related animals in order to create uniformity.
Livestock farmer Brian Muuo told this writer that selective breeding results in better quality animals that have been bred for specific characteristics.
"It's essential to make sure that you have the best offspring and that your animals don't waste time carrying offspring that will not result in the farmer making the maximum profit. This is why you need to get the seed from a quality veterinary doctor," he stated.
Flushing
In the case of pig farmers, they tend to use include creep feeding and flushing. Creep feeding involves feeding young piglets, about two weeks old, in a separate enclosure away from their mother.
This increases the appetite for the young piglets as they consume about 10 kilograms of feed before reaching 8 weeks old. Flushing, on the other hand, involves feeding gilts (female pigs under the age of one year) and sows (pigs that are three months pregnant) before breeding to enhance litter size.
After breeding, the farmers are fed a balanced ratio until the final six weeks of pregnancy and then farmers resume the normal feeding in order to avoid pregnancy complications.
Nitrogenous fertilizers
Farmers have also adopted pouring natural or synthetic fertilizers in ponds in order to increase the production of the food organisms to be eaten by fish. The fertilizers promote the development of planktonic algae which is a source of food for many fish.
Farmers are however cautioned against using the fertilizer in large quantities. Further, liquid fertilizers are considered to be the preferred type as it doesn't affect the fish.
Aquaponics
This is a farming technique that essentially combines raising fish in tanks (aquaculture) with hydroponics (growing of plants in a soilless environment). Aquaponics enables farmers to sustain an intensive food production system, resulting in higher yields and quality production as well as eco-friendly measures hence creating little waste.
Caponization
In chicken farming, caponization has been a frequent method used by farmers. This involves neutering the chickens through a growth hormone in order for the bird to grow longer, get larger and become more tender. Studies carried out in the past have revealed that eight of nine chickens get fatter after caponization.
