Brothers Phuti and Dumisani Maake from Mankweng in Limpopo, South Africa, run a backyard egg business whose main customers are university students, Vateka Halile reported for Food for Mzansi on 30 October.
Their start in farming came during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, when they turned an unused patch of their yard into a vegetable garden growing spinach, tomatoes, peppers and potatoes. Phuti, now a final-year environmental sciences student at the University of Limpopo, later began thinking about poultry, and the brothers started Maake Poultry in 2024 with their family covering most of the start-up costs.
They spent about R40,000 on the poultry house, equipment and their first 200 layer chicks. They chose layers because students want eggs all year round, while broilers would need more marketing and a processing chain. They rear broilers only in the festive season, when demand for meat rises. "With layers, I can easily collect the eggs daily and deliver them while going to attend classes," Phuti said.
The business has grown, but the brothers have not yet recovered their start-up capital. Phuti described the hard parts: finding scheduled vaccines for their layers, at one point driving around Polokwane in search of a 50 ml vaccine, and losing about 40% of one batch by the end of the cycle through inexperience. "Lack of mentorship led to many birds dying and this was affecting the number of eggs we could produce weekly," he said.
Dumisani works in Johannesburg as a food scientist and supports the farm with money and with his hands during holidays. The next goal is at least 20 hectares of land. Phuti says his studies have taught him about manure and waste management and the environmental assessments a bigger farm will need.
Photo: VanTucky / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 1.0)
Source: Food for Mzansi
Comments
(0)