Rainbow roosters: A chicken breed that could do well on Ugandan farms

By Joshua Kato

Rainbow rooster, a fast-growing Indian chicken breed, is first catching up in Uganda’s poultry farms. Namuyenje Farm, near Mukono town, is one of the farms where you will find hundreds of this breed of chicken.

Godfrey Kibuuka, the farm manager says the birds are doing well. The rainbow rooster is bred by Indbro Research and Breeding Farms in India. “It is a multi-coloured cross breed, suitable for backyard rearing and organic chicken production,” says Dr. David Livingstone Kayondo, the coordinator of Indbro Research and Breeding Farms in Uganda.

Kayondo says the rainbow rooster suffer less fatality and lay more eggs. They are also more versatile in that they can either be kept on free range or in enclosed structures.

The rainbow rooster is similar to Uganda’s indigenous chicken. The only difference is that rainbow roosters grow faster, are bigger and lay more eggs.

Brooding

The first 10 days are critical for brooding. It is advisable to brood in groups of not more than 300 chicks. Each brooder should be surrounded by  a round guard. A brooder with four bulbs should be hung at 3ft above the ground  and the height adjusted, depending on the season and comfort of the birds.

During the cold weather, room temperature should be maintained by lighting charcoal stoves (sigiris). You should also use coffee husks or wood dust to prepare the floor of the brooding house.

Provide one drinker for every 50 chicks, which means that if the brooder has 300 chicks, you should have at least six waterers. “Mine are now two-and half-months, but the cocks weigh nearly 2.2kg,” Kibuuka says.

Each mature chicken can go for at least sh30,000! Kayondo explains that if you are rearing the chicken for meat, you need to have one chicken per square metre and if you are keeping them for eggs it has to be 1.5 square metres per chicken.

Feeding

According to Kayondo, if a farmer is rearing them for meat, they can be fed using standard broiler foods, followed by a finisher diet. In about two months, female rainbow roosters will weigh at least 1.3kg. But if you are keeping them much longer, you can supplement their feeds with forage.

By eight weeks, the male rainbow roosters should weigh at least 2kg and at that time, they should have fed on not more than 4.9kg of chicken feeds.

For Kibuuka, he releases the chicken to scavenge on their own. “We have eaten some of the chicken and the meat is the same as that of local chicken,” Kibuuka says. In addition, they can also be fed on leftover food. “They can eat anything and the good thing is that they have got a good feed conversion ratio,” Kayondo says.

This means that the food they eat builds their body, compared to local breeds that eat so much, but take longer to grow,” Kayondo says.

Rainbow roosters lay at least 180 eggs per cycle. “A cycle comprises eight months, which means the rooster lays at least 23 eggs per month, which is quite good,” Kayondo says.