A helping hand at a time of need makes all the difference to small-scale Ixopo farmer Bukhosibakhe Dlamini.
By Diane McCarthy
“Don’t be impatient, the dream is happening!” So says Sadoo, aka Dlamean, aka broiler farmer Bukhosibakhe Dlamini at the top of his new Facebook reel. The 29-year-old Ixopo entrepreneur is channelling positivity, trying to attract more customers. He’s speaking to all of us as much as to himself. He’s a cheerleader, a self-starter, determined to succeed.
Dlamini has some great clips on his social media accounts, full of clucking chickens, catchy tunes and life lessons. He’s on Facebook twice: @BukhosieDlamean and a new business account @Sadoo, and his TikTok address is Bukhosie Dlamean.
“I try hard. I know that every week I must post something so people can see what I’m doing.”
It’s not easy to get a business off the ground. But sometimes the most difficult thing is to find your business. Growing up in rural KwaZulu-Natal and feeling quite sure that life was happening elsewhere without him, Dlamini heard the call of the big city. After finishing school in 2014, he set off for Durban, on the lookout for new opportunities.
“My father used his retirement money to purchase this farm, so he didn’t have much money to assist me and I was on my own,” he says. In Durban he worked at Game, then at Makro, but ultimately he decided that the city wasn’t for him after all, and he returned home.
“My father was old and needed assistance,” he says.
Making a living wasn’t easy, and Dlamini started cutting and selling firewood and saving as much money as he could.
“I was driving around, selling my wood, when I started noticing that many of my customers kept chickens. I asked them where one gets chickens and they pointed me towards the nearest town, Ixopo. That’s how the chicken farming started. I thought, ‘Let’s give it a go,’ and from there things started to fall into place.”
A helping hand
By 2024, after converting the original piggery into a chicken house, Dlamini had 100 broilers on the family farm. “The nearby NGO in Ixopo learnt of my work and linked me up with Kwanalu, and I started to do classes with them. They assessed my business and eventually offered me funding.”
Kwanalu – or the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union – is a registered nonprofit organisation representing commercial farmers and agricultural communities in the province. One of its initiatives – the Women and Youth Rural Entrepreneurship (WYRE) Programme – is making significant strides in empowering rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal by supporting entrepreneurs in the agricultural value chain.
Since its pilot in November 2021, WYRE has helped approximately 1 500 rural micro-enterprises across the province. Bukhosibakhe Dlamini is one of the recipients of this assistance.
“I applied to government agricultural institutions, but I’ve received nothing from them, so I am very grateful to Kwanalu; they have helped me a lot,” he says.
“I am currently raising 300 birds per cycle, but my plan is to get to 600 in a few months’ time. I also have a small flock of 75 layers producing eggs for me. I currently employ two people, one permanently and one on a part-time basis.”
Kwanalu, in partnership with Nedbank, provided mentorship to Dlamini, funding for the expansion of his infrastructure and assistance with day-old chicks and feed, enabling him to scale up his business. The programme has also supplied business training to help him better manage his finances.
Also read: R80 million boost for Eastern Cape emerging grain farmers
Customer base
Dlamini has met a lot of prospective customers via his social media activity, some from as far afield as Durban. His next challenge is upgrading his transport so he can expand his footprint. He currently drives the old bakkie that came with the farm after his father passed away last year. “It really is on its last legs and needs to be replaced as soon as possible.”
While he saves in order to upgrade his vehicle, he looks to his local community for support.
“Currently I’m supplying the local population. Many of them say they prefer to buy from me because they don’t like the taste of store-bought chickens.
“I have approached the local stores and have interest from them, but first I need to do all my paperwork, like my halal certificate and my safety compliance, and my infrastructure also needs to comply. It’s hard – there is so much to do and it all costs money.
“But, for now, I do have a relationship with some local caterers and I’m also supplying the teachers at a local school with fresh meat.”
Also read: She supplies 3 000 chickens a week – how Itumeleng Mahwete built Nakedi Poultry Farm from scratch
Electricity constraints
The biggest challenge facing Dlamini is the costs associated with growing the business. He needs capital to grow. Without growth he cannot realise his dream, but growth costs money, something proving hard to come by. Farming is expensive, with many daily challenges, one being the availability of reliable, cost-effective electricity.
“Consistent electricity is a big challenge. Eskom power is expensive and unreliable, so I use firewood for heating, and have built chimneys to distribute the heat in the chicken house. I also want to be able to process chickens for my customers, for which I will need freezers, but at this stage, that is unaffordable.”
On the farm, Dlamini has also established a thriving organic vegetable garden. He repurposes the chicken manure as fertiliser to enrich the soil and grow vegetables, which is another source of income.
“I’m taking classes to learn about vegetable farming and already have a few customers among the local street vendors,” he says. His most popular crop is cabbage, the nutritious and affordable staple of many a South African household. Dlamini believes his cabbages are something special, but says, “My biggest challenge is to get people to pay more for my organic vegetables. I am trying to educate people and help them understand the value of eating organic produce.”
Cultivating and harvesting his vegetable crop is an endless source of satisfaction for Dlamini, and he’s quick to point out how beneficial it is to have more than one income stream. When customers come to his farm to buy a chicken and he doesn’t have the correct change, he’ll go into the garden, pick a bunch of spinach and say, “Here’s your change!” In this way, he believes, everyone wins.
Looking ahead
The young broiler farmer has always been an entrepreneur, and providing food seems to be his destiny. Before the chickens, even before the firewood business, he had also tried his hand at fast food, selling shawarmas from a food stall.
He has big dreams and would dearly like to make them a reality. He imagines a future where he can also hatch his own chickens, and grow his own maize for food. Everything hinges on the expansion that he has set his sights on, and while his current challenges make him feel a little hampered, Dlamini is a man at peace with the choices he has made.
“Farming is a way of life and it’s my way of life,” he says emphatically, ready to conquer whatever the future might bring.
This article first appeared in Poultry Bulletin (Issue 32) June/July 2026 and is republished with permission. Click the cover below for the full edition.
Also read:
An engineer in the orchards – Turning a distressed farm around
Tshepiso Malema’s app is changing the game for small poultry farmers
200 to 6 000 chicks: Kariega poultry co-ops scale up with R642 000 fund
