At A Glance
-Inventor learned the skill on his own. His childhood love of rearing chicks motivated him to come up with the idea.
-Ndung’u was asked by his teacher due to his poor performance to repeat class six but he refused, opting to drop out of school
-He first got a broken down refrigerator for the body, a fun and a heater from a salon drier blower to regulate temperature and humidity,then a heater from an iron box to warm water and from there he built his first incubator machine.
By Bell Pere
A Narok North Sub County youth has constructed an egg incubator from scratch by himself.
Peter Ndung’u told County Press that he learned the skill on his own. He said that his childhood love of rearing chicks motivated him to come up with the idea. His heart and mind was not much in education, and he therefore paid little attention in class.
Ndung’u was asked by his teacher due to his poor performance to repeat class six but he refused, opting to drop out of school.
After dropping from school he went back to his chicken rearing, but with parental advice he chose to learn electrical wiring in 2009 from a close friend who was a well-known electrician in the village.
After his apprenticeship, he one day received a call by a friend to fix a broken incubator imported from China. It was his first assignment. Ndung’u after keenly looking at the machine he realised it did not appear as complex as he thought it would be.
After successfully fixing it and learning how the incubator worked he decided to collect scrap metals and other raw materials for making his own.
Peter first got a broken down refrigerator for the body, a fun and a heater from a salon drier blower to regulate temperature and humidity,then a heater from an iron box to warm water and from there he built his first incubator machine.
He did his first egg trial for a number of days which failed to hatch but he could not give up.
He did a research of his own via the Internet to see what went wrong with his eggs. He realized that he did not install a regulator for the heat and humidity circulation in the home made egg incubator.
His second trial was not so bad and he managed to hatch a few chicks which he successfully raised. From there he continued mending his machine to perfection.
He made some savings from selling the chicks and from his electrical job and then sought for more required items from shops in Nairobi such as funs, heaters, heat regulators, cardboards, metal rods and any other materials necessary for making the incubators.
Ndung’u put up a workshop at home and started making his own egg incubators. His first client was from Kericho town whom he sold an incubator for Sh45,000. His client put a good word for him in the area and he managed to sell a few more others, giving him an opportunity to open up a shop at Mung’are area in Narok.
Today he makes a variety of incubators depending on a customer’s specifications. His smallest incubator holds 176 eggs, another 264 eggs and the largest has a capacity of up to over 3,960 eggs.
His incubators are unique in that the incubator rotates the eggs after every one and a half hours and has a success rate of between 85 to 90 percent unlike those imported from China.
Peter’s largest market is now in Narok and its surrounding sub-counties from which he earns livelihood.
His advice to the youth is that sometimes passion and skills can beat education and that lack of formal job opportunities cannot be a reason for languishing in poverty. He cautions youths against engaging in drug and substance abuse due to stress build up for lacking a job.
He plans to open up more shops in other counties in order to create more job opportunities for youths.