By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Project Director
Much progress has been made in our Happy Chicken Project!
This month we combined forces with US Peace Corps volunteer Carissa, a Koro Island PC volunteer, who organied a group of five women (plus herself), from the devastated island of Koro in Lomaiviti Province, in the heart of Fiji.
We created a separate GG site for the funding for Koro, so that additional funds could be raised and earmarked for Koro work. Using Happy Chicken funds, we also brought seven additional people from four villages of Moturiki Island to the workshop, located at the Livelihoods Training Centre in the Sigatoka Valley. These two groups were joined by four additional participants from three communities.
The trainees learned the happy chicken free-range methods and how to train chickens where to sleep and where to lay, how to make chicken feed from local resources, how to build secure houses of locally available materials to keep the chickens out of the rain and storms, how to breed and hatch chickens more successfully to increase their numbers, and how to care for their chicks in moble rearing pens, etc. Five mobile rearing pens were constructed by the participants, with two sent to Koro and five pens sent to Moturiki with 150 and 300 chicks sent respectively! We had earlier hatched and grown the chicks to the three-week stage before sending them, to increase their survival and ability to withstand the trip by car, boat, and carrier.
Follow up will occur in the coming weeks and months, with assistance from two C4C board members Simione and Suliana, as well as with help from US Peace Corps volunteer Carissa and her replacement. The vision of the participants, as expressed in the workshop, is to expand the work as lessons are learned, to recycle the mobile rearing pens with new lots of chicks, and to spread the knowledge and chickens to additional villages. We have assured the communities that many more chicks can be sent as long as they successfully expand the project under increasingly local resources, and as long as we continue to get donations through Global Giving, as the hatchery, shipping, and transport costs must be covered.
Our hatchery is at peak of season now, with 10-12 dozen chicks hatched per week. Once we get the new incubator that is being donated by the South Pacific Community, we can then increase to 20 dozen chicks per week, based on present production of the Happy Chicken breeding flocks, and assuming that the demand for island adapted chicks keeps increasing as it has been in recent months. We have with your help so far distributed over fifteen thousand chicks to comunities in Fiji.
From September the focus will turn to Vanuatu once more, as Fiji Biosecurity assures us that the one-year observational inspection period will finally be completed, and we will at long last become certified as an exporter. Towards the goal of promoting a sustainable Happy Chicken project in Vanuatu, we will be bringing over two youth from Vanuatu to the Sustainable Livelihods Farm in Fiji for training in early October. They will be here for two months and will then return home to begin managing the Vanuatu project, providing training, chicken breeding, and follow up as needed, and saving project funds in the long term.
Thanks again for all you have done to help this project!
Austin and the Happy Chicken team
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