Nine years ago, Matt Muthama owned only two goats, a gift from his uncle in Githunguri, Kiambu. Today, he is the co-founder of KEFT Farm in Wamasa, Kinango, Kwale County, a 600-acre enterprise running more than 3,000 goats and 600 breeding cattle, and selling animals as far as Tanzania, the Gambia and Zambia.A breeding goat from the farm sells for an average of Sh15,000, with superior animals fetching considerably more depending on genetics, age and other traits.Roughly 40 percent of everything sold eventually leaves Kenya altogether, carried across borders by buyers who resell them in other African markets.”We have encountered animals originating from our farm in Tanzania, the Gambia and Zambia after buyers acquired and resold them,” Mr Muthama says.Two business modelsThe farm runs two parallel business models, and the logistics behind each are deliberately different.The first is breeding: producing and selling quality Galla goats rather than fattening them for meat, with does retained to grow the herd and bucks sold on to avoid inbreeding.The second is trading: buying goats from northern Kenya when prices are low, fattening them on the farm’s own fodder for about 90 days, then selling at nearly double the purchase price.Once buying and fattening costs are factored in, that model alone earns about 40 percent returns. Together, the two approaches spread KEFT’s income across breeding and commercial trade, while home-grown fodder keeps feed costs down.The six partners who run KEFT Farm have set aside 100 of their 600 acres purely for fodder, growing maize for silage, lucerne, sorghum and cowpeas, and buying in only minerals, vitamins and salts from Nairobi.Growing their own feed has cut feeding costs by close to 70 percent, and improved production techniques have pushed maize silage yields from about seven tonnes per acre to 20 tonnes.The farm aims to keep six months of feed in reserve at any time, a buffer against drought.Hobby turned businessMr Muthama’s route into livestock business began far from Kwale. Trained as an irrigation engineer by a French company and specialising in centre-pivot systems, he worked on large farms, including one in Naivasha growing lucerne, where he first saw how irrigation and fodder production could be built into a proper livestock enterprise.His own experiments started small: dairy goats kept on a quarter-acre plot in Dagoretti, Nairobi, after a friend brought in Saanen goats from South Africa. One of his animals, a Toggenburg he named Githunguri, produced between two and three kids and about five litres of milk a day.Turning pointThe turning point came just before the Covid-19 pandemic, when Mr Muthama sold one of his best dairy goats at a Nairobi breeders’ show for Sh120,000. “That is when I knew livestock can give me something,” he says.He went on to acquire more Saanen and Toggenburg goats, later adding French Alpine genetics, and crossbreeding produced what he calls Kenyan Alpine animals.Turning a backyard hobby into a 3,000-goat business took partners, and Mr Muthama found his in an unlikely place.”I met the business partners in an entertainment joint,” he says. One of them backed his livestock venture financially, and the hobby became a company.The partners started by buying goats from Baringo at Sh6,000 to Sh7,000 each, fattening them and selling into the meat market. By 2022, their herd in Dagoretti had reached about 1,200 goats.A scouting trip to Kwale in 2020 set the next stage in motion. The partners pooled their savings and bought 105 acres as the foundation of what is now their 600-acre ranch.KEFT Farm began with 200 Galla does and 10 bucks. Through steady breeding and additions to the herd, that foundation grew into roughly 1,500 breeding does and about 1,000 young does, with the partners now working to hold a herd of around 3,000 goats at any given time.Galla was chosen deliberately, for its suitability to Kwale’s conditions and for its demand. “We are trying to address quality Galla goats. Kenya has quality animals that the international market accepts,” Mr Muthama says.The farm also keeps around 600 breeding cattle, using Boran as mother stock crossed with Limousin and Simmental genetics to produce larger animals.Buyers are walked through management, breeding information and record-keeping before they take animals home, and Mr Muthama says many return once they see how the genetics perform. “Training is part of our sales model.”The setbacksScaling a herd this size has not been without setbacks. The partners arrived in Kwale to find plenty of grass but little water, and heavy rains that made access difficult. Ticks became enough of a problem that the farm built its own dipping system, and increasingly erratic rainfall has made fodder planning harder, even with mechanisation and irrigation easing some of the pressure.The farm’s answer is a mega dam, currently under construction, covering about four hectares with a planned capacity of 202,000 cubic metres. “We expect it to support irrigation of up to 80 hectares of fodder,” Mr Muthama says.Mechanisation, including a tractor for fieldwork, has also kept the workforce lean: just nine employees split between livestock and agronomy handle a 3,000-strong herd and 100 acres of fodder.The lessonsFor Mr Muthama, the biggest lesson from nine years in the business is that livestock farming never stops demanding research. Of the six partners now behind KEFT Farm, four are directly involved as co-founders, and Mr Muthama is candid about what that partnership has meant.”You join hands, you go far. You go alone, you go fast, but you go nowhere.”The next chapter, he says, is turning KEFT Farm itself into a training centre for Galla breeding, animal nutrition and livestock management.→swaweru@ke.nationmedia.com Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
