This article focuses on cricket farming in Kenya. Cricket farming is steadily picking up as a game-changer in Kenya’s agricultural sector. Crickets are dark/brown insects that are categorized into two groups, house and field cricket. The insects are mostly familiar with those living in rural areas and are known to produce an ‘irritating’ sound.
Cricket farming in Kenya is mainly practised by farmers in Nyanza region, with a majority rearing the house crickets. The crickets can easily be captured in the wild and reared in buckets or crates where females lay eggs. The eggs hatch into nymphs after about one month. It takes about three months for them to fully mature.
One advantage of rearing crickets is that they can be reared throughout the year as they are independent of unpredictable weather/ climate change. This implies that a cricket farmer earns profit throughout the year if he/she rears them for commercial purposes.
Conditions For Rearing Crickets
- Cricket farming requires very little capital to kick off. Kshs 1,000 is simply enough to kick off.
- A 3m by 4m space is enough to rear a sustainable number of crickets. This space can hold about 100 crates of cricket.
- Crickets feed on readily available food and are best fed in the morning and evening. You can feed them with food leftovers such as sukuma wiki/ kale, potato peelings and very little water.
Benefits Of Cricket Farming
- Crickets are very nutritious and have a protein content of 60 percent.
- Crickets can be reared for consumption as food or can alternatively be crashed to produce powder. The powder is used as an ingredient for making porridge, preparing mandazis, chaparis, cakes and cookies. The powder can also be used as chicken or fish meal.
Cricket farming is a very profitable venture that can earn one a good fortune in just three months as long as he/she has a ready market. A crate of crickets goes for around Kshs 700. Assuming you have about 100 crates, that is a profit of Kshs 70,000.
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