Happy Chickens for Fiji Food & Climate Emergency!

Greetings to all our Happy Chicken supporters.  Thanks to your generosity, Global Giving funds helped leverage a grant from the Pacific Developmenrt and Conservation Trust (NZ), and we were finally able to get solar power installed into our Happy Chicken hatchery!   

This is a very important step in securing the survival of the developing chicks, as two cyclones have in the past caused widespread power failure for several weeks, and the resulting loss of over 700 developing chicks each time. The solar power also saves on our power bills and helps the hatchery become carbon neutral.

We hatched 730 chicks in July, and we are just now at full capacity, with peak laying season for the hens, and we expect over 900 chicks per month from August through October, with a gradual decine beginning in November and December and with low season in February /March as the hens mostly go into moult, changing their feahers and gathering strength for another year of laying.

We continue to sell the chicks at cost or slightly below cost to the poor farmers in the area, and we give the chicks away to needy families in the surrounding comunities. This week we sent five young breeding roosters to Tailevu, on the other side of the island, to reinforce a youth project using imported layer hens, which will be crossed to produce improved local hybrid layers, hatched in one of the small 90-egg incubators we have gotten for communities. Two weeks ago we sent 50, 4-week old pullets to Malolo Island to start a project there. 

Our next scheduled workshop is the first week of October, with six people coming all the way from Papua New Guinea to learn our community-appropriate methods, also paired with Fijian counterparts who have asked to be trained.

Farm News: Our hatchery manager Nicole, married to our farm manager Emenoni (Junia), delivered a healthy baby boy four weeks ago, and so others have been filling in to do the work, including young volunteers from Austraila and the USA.  Every time we have needed extra help, somehow it has been provided. The work is sometimes overwhelming, but the blessings are overflowing, and through you, and unseen hands the resources required are given. 

Vinaka vakalevu, loloma levu mai Viti.

(Thank you very much, much love from Fiji.)      

We conducted our very first international Happy Chicken traing workshop at the Fiji farm and hatchery for ten days, 9-18 April.  A group of five community representatives flew in from the remote coral atolls of Aranuka, Marakei, and Tarawa, with the transport paid for by an Australian grant to our Kiribati partner, FSPK.

An important revelation of the discussions during the week is that the fish of Aranuka Atoll have become poisonous to eat in recent years, since the corals died in the 2014-15 mass coral bleaching event, which was caused by extremely hot water due to el Nino and climate change. The fish poison "ciguatera" has worsened to the point whereby people are deprived of most reef fish in their diet, with only a few species remaining safe to eat.  This makes the chicken project all the more important to the community.  

The goal of the workshop was to learn the care and breeding principles necessary to build a successful community poultry programme on each of the atolls.  Due to the isolation of Kiribati, the projects must rely totally on local feeds, rather than imported feed. The participants learned about local plant foods, care and feeding, housing, and breeding. Incubation was also taught, using the small incubators that they already have on site.  An illustrated handbook was created that includes most of the information, and was given out to the participants.

Additional training included the making of virgin coconut oil (VCO), as a means for de-fatting coconut so that more coconut can be fed to the chickens- full-fat coconut can only be 25% of a healthy chicken diet, while defatted coconut can make up 40-50%.   Leucaena and morniga leaves, chopped kumala leaves, and chopped Vigna beach pea leaves are ideally added to the defatted coconut, which ensures that more healthy vegetable matter and complete/balanced protein sources are consumed.

Using the VCO, we demonstrated soap making to the trainees, which was very exciting to them.  Coconut oil soap lathers well in brackish water, and is better for the atolls than imported soaps. Dried seaweeds, brought to Fiji from Kiribati, were made into seaweed gel, and then used to make kimchee pickles and coconut jelly pie.  The biggest hit was the after-shower gel, made from seven parts seaweed gel mixed with one part VCO, scented with vanilla and orange oil.  Everyone took a bottle home, with plans to make their own. 

As Ruiti, the FSPK Director, had a permit for bringing seeds back, we spent time preparing and drying various vegetable and fruit seeds from around the farm. 

Each participant was sent home with an efficient coconut grater, a strong bucket, watering dishes for baby chicks, a roll of 1cm wire mesh for making a mobile rearing pen (7 meter x 75cm), a 500 gram bottle of caustic soda for making soap, and ample chick starter feed.

We will send the baby chicks via plane to Kiribati next week, and FSPI will follow up on the atolls.  We are also planning for follow up visits, as resources allow.  

The former president of Kiribati, Mr Anote Tong, visited the farm to view the project last week, right on the heels of the Kiribati workshop.  This historic visit was filmed by Netherlands TV, and will be aired in several countries in Europe. This visit was a great honor for the Happy Chicken project and the farm staff, and we hope the filming will result in some good exposure as well.  

Thanks so much for your support in making this vital work happen.