Chicken rearing is a viable income generation activity

Introduction
Many people living on the margins struggle to find an income generating activity that could assist them in providing for themselves and their dependants especially in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Life is extremely hard especially when you have to depend on your self to produce enough food for your family and at the same time engage in some economic activities that will provide some cash that can be used to pay for education and health care. Recently, I met a self-trained, charismatic chicken farmer who believes that chicken rearing is a profitable income generating activity that can assist in improving the living standards in his family.

Some of Mr. Hampuwo's chickens

Feeding, disease and pest control
Timothy Hampuwo, a senior Zambian citizen living in Mulongo Village, Chief Hamaundu's area in Pemba, Southern Province, started rearing chickens in March 2009. Before leading life as an ordinary villager Mr Hampuwo was employed as a government teacher. His stock of birds is made up of indigenous breeds that are managed under a semi-controlled system. The chickens feed free range but in order to ensure that they have adequate nutrients their feed is supplemented their with organic food e.g. maize bran (which is sometimes mixed with sunflower cake or soya beans). In order to ensure that laying birds, which are housed in laying compartments on a raised grass and poles structure, have access to live ants (which are a major source of protein in the free range management system) Mr. Hampuwo has developed a very clever way of attracting the ants to the bird's cages. He puts dry or wet grass sprinkled with water in each laying compartment and this attracts the ants making them climb into the compartment to feed on the grass. In this way the laying birds have easier and adequate supply of ants. When it comes to avian disease and pest control, Mr Hampuwo relies on herbal drugs e.g. day old chicks are given a herbal mixture as vaccination against diseases.

Labour and capital requirements
Before seriously engaging in chicken rearing, Mr Hampuwo carried out an assessment to find out the advantages of chicken rearing as well as the requirements for a successful business. In his assessment he found out that chicken rearing does not require a lot of labour. The main tasks are feeding and giving water to the birds. The minimal labour requirements reduce the cost of production thus contributing to maximum returns on very little production inputs. According to Mr. Hampuwo it is possible even for those that do not have financial capital to start a chicken rearing business in the context of rural Zambia. This is because in the Zambian culture it is common for an individual to be given a chicken free of charge by a well wisher and this gift can be used to start a business. Another way is through borrowing a laying bird on condition that you repay by giving the lender an agreed number of chickens after a given period.

Brooding hens at Mr. Hampuwo's village

Egg/chick production
Mr. Hampuwo has observed that his laying chickens lay eggs 4 times in a year and therefore produce chicks every 3 months. Each bird lays 15 eggs. After the eggs hatch he puts 10 chicks on his income generating business while 5 chicks are reserved for home consumption. His stock includes 25 laying birds, 2 cockrels that service the laying birds and 23 male birds. He plans to increase the number of his laying birds to 50 by March, 2011.

Marketing
Birds are sold at 8 or 10 months. Initially, Mr Hampuwo was selling his birds in his village and surrounding communities at the cost of K25,000 (approximately USD 2) each. Realising that this price was low he decided to do a market research so that he could get a higher price for his birds. He now sells his chickens in Lusaka, Zambia's capital city which is located hundreds of kilometers from his village. Twice a year he travels to Lusaka's Chilenje Market to sell his chickens where female birds are sold at K45,000 (approximately USD 9) and cockrels at K50,000 (approximately USD 10).

Conclusion
Chicken rearing is a very good income generating actitivity for resouce challenged areas such as rural areas. It is not very costly to start especially where the stock is made up of local indigenous chickens commonly referred to as 'village or free range chickens' in Zambia. The minimal labour requirements make chicken rearing an appropriate income generating activity even for labour constrained individuals such as the elderly or People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Mr Hampuwo's experience with this income generating activity has been very positive and other farmers can learn from this especially in terms of management and marketing.

PMTC- best way of protecting your child from HIV/AIDS infection

PMTC is Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS. In Zambia PMTC is available to all expectant mothers that attend Anti-natal Clinics. PMTC if properly adhered to highly reduces the risk of infection from an HIV positive mother to her unborn child and also during child birth. After the child is born, there is also a regime of drugs that are prescribed to the mother and child to prevent infection. PMTC has only became available to expectant mothers in recent years. Some mothers miss the opportunity to prevent infection of their child either because they do not know their status or because they are afraid to be on a PMTC programme even when they know their status. This is very sad because a decision to be part of a PMTC programme can be the greatest gift that a mother can give to her unborn child.

Last week I was extremely touched by a story of a 17 year old Zambian girl living in Mazabuka, a small sugar producing town in the Southern Province. This young girl was born in February 1993. She has 5 elder brothers and sisters and one younger sister. She is a double orphan. Both are parents died in 2003. She is living with her siblings in a house that they bought from their fathers' benefits in a compound known as Nakambala in Mazabuka. Gladys (not real name) found out that she was HIV postive earlier this year after a prolonged illness. She was diagonised with Tuberculosis (TB) in January, 2010 and was put on treatment. However, despite completing the TB treatment her condition did not improve and detriorated further. Medical officials at Mazabuka Hospital therefore advised her to take an HIV test. She was positive. The young girl said that she has accepted her status. She is still being treated for TB and she is not yet on Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) because her CD4 count has not yet being taken. According to Gladys her blood levels are extremely low such that it is had not been possible for medical personnel to get a sample from her frangile body for a CD4 count. Sadly, at the time that I visited Glady at her home she had not been given TB injections for about 3 days due to shortage of TB drugs at Mazabuka Hospital. Gladys's elder sister Anna (not real name) explained that the shortage of TB drugs in Mazabuka's public and private health facilities as well as pharmacies was negatively impacting on the poor health of her sister.

Gladys could not sit for her grade nine final examination due to poor health. She attends school at a community school in Mazabuka where she has been absent for a long time due to her poor health. Gladys does not know how she became infected with HIV. However, her elder sister Anna suspects that Gladys may have acquired the virus from her mother. Gladys' mother become very sick after giving birth to her and Anna suspects that this may have been the time that Gladys contracted the virus. She narrated that Gladys' young sister Mable (not real name) aged 14 years old is also HIV positive and is on ART treatment. I met Mable. She is a shy, fine looking girl.

Gladys' dream is to complete her formal education and to assist her family with financially. For now, this may be a very ambitious dream given her poor health. I hope that relevant authorities will come to the aid of this poor girl and others by stocking all health instutitions with adequate supplies of life saving drugs for TB and other infections. In the recent past, there has been diminishing focus and funding for TB and HIV/AIDS globally. Gladys' sad story reminders policy makers and development workers that perhaps it is premature to reduce funding to TB/HIV/AIDS because it still remains a very big health and development problem especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also a wake up call for parents especially mothers to take an HIV test and also take appropriate action e.g. PMTC to prevent infection to their unborn child. Perfect health is the greatest gift that a mother can give to an unborn child and infant. It is indeed sad that Gladys has only discovered that she is HIV positive when she has already developed full blown AIDS. If this teenager's status was known earlier through appropriate action of her guardians the health problems are now affecting her may have been prevented or minimised. Mable whose status was known earlier is in better health because of ART treatment but her elder sister's life hungs in the balance given the current shortage of TB drugs in Mazabuka.

Zambia's Maize Bumper Harvest-storage blues?

Zambia's 2009/2010 maize harvest is a record 2.8 million metric tonnes (Zambia Daily Mail, 2010). Over 80% of this maize was harvested by small scale farmers. From the above figure of 2.8 million metric tonnes, one deduces that this is very good news in terms of national and household food security because maize is the main staple food for the majority of Zambians.

Government has purchased most of the harvested grain through the Food Reserve Agency (FRA). FRA is the official government mandated agency that purchases maize from farmers all over the country. FRA stores the purchased grain at various satellite and main depots dotted around the country. Sadly, in the recent past various print and electonic media have been reporting on poor storage facilities at the FRA depots resulting in soaking, germination and rotting of some of the stored grain with the falling of the first rains in most parts of the country. On 16th November, 2010,  Muvi TV main news reported that several 50 kilo gramme bags of maize have gone to waste in Central province. The station reported that some maize grain at storage sheds in Serenje and Chisamba have either germinated or rotted due to exposure to rain water.

Given the huge efforts that farmers, government and several other stakeholders have been making to improve maize production and ultimately food security it is indeed disturbing that poor storage facilities will result in loss of substantial amounts of grain. FRA and all relevant authorities have the moral responsibility to ensure that they move in quickly and secure the remaining grain before it is too late and that in future proper storage mechanisms will be put in place.

Independence day, are all workers free?

In the past few days, I have been reminded by notices from my kids' schools that Zambia's independence day will soon dawn on us. School kids have been rehearsing poems and traditional dances and have been asked to acquire traditional Zambian outfits in preparation for Zambia's 46th independence anniversary which falls on Sunday, 24th October, 2010. However, despite all this hype at schools about this important national day, you get a sense that we still have a long way before all Zambians will enjoy the fruits of political independence.

This years' celebration will be overshadowed by the recent shooting of 11 miners at Chinese owned Collum Coal mine situated in the rural district of Sinazongwe in Southern province. The 11 miners were shot by 2 Chinese mine managers following a protest over low wages and poor working conditions. The shooting was followed by ugly scenes on local television stations of law enforcement officers stopping 2 youths from 2 opposition political parties from entering the Chinese embassy to officially protest over the shooting of the miners. The 2 youths were not allowed to see the Chinese Ambassador at the Embassy despite having an official appointment by the law enforcement officers.

Labour conflicts over low wages and poor working conditions have become common place in our country. High in-flows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the Zambian economy, especially the mining sector, have not always boosted morale and inspired pride in miners. In the past, working as a miner was regarded with nostalgia and prestige. Miners had some of the best working conditions in the country and were highly admired by employees in other professions. In the days leading up to independence day, mine townships would come alive with national colors- red, green, black and orange- and everyone was in high expectant spirits as independence day drew closer. Poor working conditions under some new mine owners and other investors have taken away some of the joy of independence leaving many people wondering whether the clock is ticking back to pre-independence days when Zambian workers were poorly treated by their colonial masters. 

On Friday 22^nd October, 2010 yet another sad incidence happened adding more injury to the lot of Zambian workers.  An adult male employed by a South African construction company as a casual worker at a construction site for an ultra modern shopping mall in Lusaka owned by South Africans was crushed to death while on duty. According to Muvi Tv main news, the casual worker met his fate when a pile of heavy fibre glass he was tasked to off load from a container fell on him instantly crushing him to death. ‘Casualisation’ is a big problem affecting workers in Zambia. Casual workers are not entitled to retirement or terminal benefits after leaving employment and are usually not paid a decent living wage. It is doubtful whether the surviving relatives of the person that was crushed to death on Friday will be adequately compensated for their loss.   

Children in prison: infants living with mothers serving sentences

Yesterday I came across an organisation that is providing some material relief to children and mothers in prisons in Zambia. I was very impressed with this initiative. I have always been very sympathetic with the plight of prisoners. However, many people forget about the little innocent children who have to spend their early childhood in prison if their mother is behind bars. In Zambia, mothers and expectant mothers are allowed to stay with infants up to the age of 4 years old in prison if there is no one willing to take care of the child while the mother is serving her sentence.

I was therefore impressed that some people are helping these infants and mothers by donoting clothing, food and toys. I have personally been challenged to take time and think about how I can contribute to such worthy causes. I hope that you have also been inspired to help little children that may be in similar situations in your part of the world.

Welcome

I would like to welcome you to my blog. The main aim of my blog is to discuss development, communication and agriculture related issues. I will also provide social commentary on various issues affecting my community and the wider world.