The farm was established in 1912 by William Arthur Brookes, a British Army Major and has passed ownership has passed 3 times since among Senior British Colonial Generals including George Cowie Gair and Bill Harris before being taken up by the late Reuben Chesire in 1971.
From a farm focused mainly on breeding Sahiwal crosses, Reuben embarked on an aggressive breeding program that pioneered the importation of Heifers and Bulls and later semen from the UK which led to Makongi having the largest pedigree Ayrshire herd in Eastern Africa by 1980 and one of the largest in Eastern Africa. In essence the farm is regarded as the foundation of the Ayrshire herd in Kenya and has imported heifers and bulls across East Africa and as far as Cameroon.
Makongi has maintained a strict breeding and recording system and to this end the farm is a habitual winner at all Livestock shows in the country and has been selling bulls to the National AI Stations in Kenya and Tanzania. The farm currently has 12 bulls at the National AI Stations (KAGRC).
Makongi has a herd of 500 cattle. The farm has had an aggressive breeding program over the last 4 years which focuses on using Swedish Red and Finnish Ayrshire Sexed Semen as well as its newly build Invitro Fertilisation
-Embryo Transplant laboratory that we are using to propagate the dairy herd to increase replacement calves as well as avail heifers to farmers.
The lab will be producing 1800 sexed pregnancies annually. We intend to have a milking herd of 1500 cows and producing 30,000 liters daily by 2018.
