A-team of five students from three Universities in Uganda are developing an Incubator that will help poultry farmers to solve the problem of nutritional deficiency.
They are working on project that will increase the production of larvae which is rich in the necessary nutrients for poultry such as vitamins and proteins.
One of the students Thomas Kagame of Muni University said that many poultry farmers have been experiencing a problem of nutritional feeds for their poultry, which had compelled many to resort to buying expensive feeds.
With the upcoming technology, farmers will be in position to make their own protein and vitamin feeds since its simple and cheap to utilize.
“The Larvae Incubation Can will help farmers to overcome poultry feeds challenge ounce embranced. Farmers will be able to produce thousands of larvae that contain a lot of proteins and vitamins,” said Kagame.
The five students are Thomas Kagame from Muni University, Deus Agaba Deus, Simon Peter Kamya, and Sharon Samanya all from UTAMU University, and Mwebaze Norbert a Civil Engineer student of International University of East Africa.
The development of the Incubation Can is as a result of a study that was carried out by a Veterinary Doctor from Makerere University which found out that there was a lot nutritional deficiency, food insecurity and low production capacity in poultry.
Famers are not accessing quality cheap poultry feeds that are enriched with Vitamins and proteins.
Many are depending on substituted poultry feeds that is very expensive for small holder poultry farmers.
In the report it was recommended that poultry farmers should consider feeding their birds with larvae of Black soldier flies which are more enriched with vitamins and proteins.
Basing on the report many farmers adopted the recommendations but they were again faced with challenges of hatching eggs of the flies on a large scale.
Those that tried were depending on nature to hatch the eggs in order to get the maggot (larvae) to feed their poultry.
It’s from this back ground that the Information and Technology Students with support from UTAMU University and Uganda Communications Commission came with the Idea of developing an Incubator that can hatch the eggs 24hours to ensure that farmers can have constant supply of the larvae’s at cheap cost.
Kagame says that the gadget in pipeline is an automated one installed with sensors that can help farmers to regulate temperature which favors the hatching process.
“Our Incubator has temperature sensors that can help farmers to determine the temperature, once it’s below 25degress centigrade, it automatically increases the temperature and when it riches 30degress centigrade, it reduces automatically because the eggs hatch at a temperature condition between 25-30degress centigrade,” explained Kagame.
How the farmers get the eggs of the black flies.
According to Kagame, farmers need to have dug for animals like Cow Dug ,Pig dug etc, a smell that can attract flies.
At the process of laying eggs on the dug, farmers transfer the dug into the Incubator Can and its where the process of hatching starts.
For the farmers to get good results the temperature in the Incubator must range from 25degress centigrade to 30 degrees centigrade.
Once the eggs have been hatched, it takes 2-3 days for the maggot (larvae) to develop and once they have developed, farmers are then allowed to feed their birds with the larvae.
They are more nutritious to birds compared to the substituted ingredients.
BY SAMUEL NABWIISO
