Road's Camp Poultry Workshop

Shaun and I, with the help of our friends fellow PCV Jessica and Zambian counterpart ba Chastity, facilitated a 3-day Poultry Workshop for a Women's Group at Road's Camp in Mwense boma. This group of consists of about 20 women who live in the Road's Camp community. The women are mostly married women, but there are four who are unmarried- none are widows. Ba Chastity introduced us to the group a couple weeks ago. She arranged an introductory meeting where we all met and discussed the group's activities, needs and how Shaun and I can help. In our meeting, we learned the following:

• The group has been keeping broiler chickens for sale for under a year, perhaps just six months, but they have never been formally trained on keeping broilers and the business thereof. They purchased the chickens (about 150 to start) and raised their start-up capital (for initial feed, opening a bank account, building houses, etc.) through a loan provided by a local government office (I believe the Office of Community Development).
• On their first round, they purchased 150 chickens and necessary commercial feed from Mansa, raised the broilers for 6 weeks and then sold them for 30,000 Zkw ($6 USD) each. The group said they lost a lot of money on their initial round for 2 major reasons: selling on credit and spending too much on feed.
  
  
• When they sold on credit they found that many folks simply did not follow through on payment. So essentially, they gave away for free chickens that were sold on credit. The group learned a very valuable lesson with this and has since enacted a policy where they do not sell on credit. They sell on a cash basis now which seems to be working well.
  
  
• While the group was able to solve their first problem, they were stumped as to how to solve the feed problem. They knew they were spending too much money on feed, which they have transported up from Mansa. However, they were also unsure how to cutback, or if they reasonably could, without damaging their product- the chickens.

Based on this information, Shaun and I designed a workshop around the basic necessary knowledge about keeping broilers and how to resolve the business problems they were facing. The women asked that the workshop be facilitated over 3 morning sessions, and Shaun and I had an 3-day opening in our schedule the following week.

To ensure maximum participation, we let the women set the schedule, knowing our availability, and they decided upon the following Wednesday-Friday 08hrs to 12hrs. Having worked in Zambia for over a year now, I was a bit skeptical about the 08hrs start time, as it seems things never really get started until 09hrs or 10hrs. Nonetheless, we agreed, understanding that the women may need more flexibility when the workshop actually happens. Afterall, they have households to run, husbands to ready and feed before work, and children to bathe, dress and feed before school.

Shaun and I with the women's group in front of their very nice chicken house.

Fast-forward now to the following Wednesday: the first day of our workshop... We arrived at 08hrs at the compound where a few of the women stay. We found only to find 3 women present, but busy sweeping and dressing children- not at all ready to begin the day's workshop. I laughed to myself, as Shaun, Jessica and Chastity and I took a seat in the classroom and pleasantly chatted amongst ourselves until the whole group had arrived. We started at 09:20.

This wasn't a problem for us, and I do not mean to present a negative image of the ladies. I point it out only to provide an illustration of how Time is a very different thing in the U.S. than it is here in Zambia. I have also had Zambians arrive at 07hrs for meeting that isn't scheduled to begin until 08:30. I believe the term for the way Zambians view time is “polychronic”.

Anyway, at 09:20 we launched into our Poultry Workshop. As is customary, we took the next 10 minutes setting the time table for the workshop, so everyone present can agree more realistically on what they can commit to. We decided we'd meet Wednesday to Friday from 09hrs to 12hrs and we elected Irene^, one of the women, as timekeeper. Then we spent another 10 minutes coming up with the “norms”, or rules, we'll follow during our workshop: phones on low volume or vibrate; reduce classroom movements; respect everyone's contributions; keep time; speak through the chair (which is the equivalent of raising your hand to speak).

Following this, Shaun launched into a “theory” session about chicken nutrition, housing, egg-layers, laying periods and cycles, using your own layers to produce your next generation of laying hens, etc. After the “theory” session, we went out to the chicken house to observe the groups' current feeding regime so we could make recommendations the following day. We observed the women filling a bucket of feed and then filling the feeders, which hang down from rafters in the chicken house, until each feeder was full. However, they did not measure out the feed to know how much they were providing our how much filled the feeders. 

Thursday we were on schedule, starting just after 09hrs. We started the day with a “practical” session on daily feed requirements and measuring the feed given to the chickens. Using the Agromisa and CTA guidelines for small-scale chicken-rearing in Africa, we calculated that their flock would need 15kg of feed per day. So, we decided they will need to measure out 15kg of feed per for each day. This is a change from their previous, non-standardized method of simply filling the feeders until full.

To measure the feed, I taught the women how to measure out their feed using a “village scale.” This is my favorite trick to teach rural Zambians- it is so simple to create and learn, and people seem to feel empowered to learn it. All you need is: 

• a liter of water
• a lightweight container for the water
• a stick strong enough to balance 1 kg on either side
• a fulcrum of some kind (chair back, post, etc.)
• a plastic bag to hold whatever you're trying to measure. 

Since 1 liter of water weighs 1kg, you fill your lightweight water bottle with 1 liter of water. Then you hang it on one end of your stick. Using the chairback or post as your fulcrum, hang the plastic bag on the other end of the stick, and then fill the bag with what your measuring, in our case, chicken feed. When the liter of water and the plastic bag balance, you've got 1kg of feed! If you want to measure more than 1kg at a time, use a bigger lightweight water container, more liters of water and a bigger stick (wink).

Measuring feed using a "village scale"

Measuring feed using a "village scale". That's my excited mzungu hand saying "we've reached balance!"

This addressed the women's problem of giving the chickens too much feed, thus losing a lot of profit. They brought out their normal feed daily ration, and we measured 15kg from that. There was an enormous mound leftover, which represents wasted food, and their wasted profit. The women were very excited to see this very tangible illustration of why they were losing money and how to solve the problem. They understood the scale and measuring really well; they were all smiles at the end of the lesson!

After this, we moved back into the classroom for a lesson on record-keeping. Record-keeping is essential to running a successful business, big or small, and it is a skills very few in Zambia understand and practice. We talked about keeping 2 types of records for the group's operations: daily records and financial records. The daily records record daily activities and other things that relate to the daily operations of the poultry business: feedings, illness, vaccinations, inspections, other official visits, flock size, etc. The financial records record expenditures, sales, other income, and provide the group's financial balance.

To get the group started right away, I purchased 2 notebooks in Mwense boma for 10,000 Zkw ($2 USD) each and gave them to the group. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we provide knowledge, not things or money, as a means of contributing to sustainable development. So, I do not usually give things to the people and groups we work with, but I didn't want these women to have any excuse for not keeping records! The women were very appreciative, clapping and whooping and thanking us for the workbooks. It was a very warm feeling.

This session led us up to noon, when we knock off for the day. The women were so impressed with the lessons they treated us to a delicious lunch of “ubwali wa mataba” (maize nshima), ifisahi (vegetables, in this case bean leaves and African eggplant, cooked with pounded groundnut meal), and rape (a green leafy vegetable, usually pan-cooked with oil, tomatoes and onions). As we were their guests of honor, the women prepared the meal for us and set a table in the nicest room in the house, the dining room, and left us to eat by ourselves. Meanwhile they all ate together sitting on a reed mat in an entirely separate room. This is the custom popularly observed in rural Zambia- men and guests of honor eat in the nicest room or place available, while the women and children eat together, usually sitting on the floor, in another room.

Sadly, our session Friday was cancelled because the mother of a woman in the group had died in the night. So, the family and community is in grief. They will hold the funeral today and bury the woman's body this afternoon. I don't know what caused the woman's death, but perhaps solace can be found in that she was a mature woman who'd lived a full life, able to watch her children grow into adults and have families and children of their own. We have planned to resume and wrap up our workshop with a session on Business Planning and Cashflow Management in November, when Shaun and I have time available once again in our calendar.

^ real name not used to preserve anonymity.

 

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Shaun and I are in Chebele to promote and teach rural aquaculture, but I find there is as much a need in this area to educate folks about keeping chickens. It still amazes me how many people here keep chickens yet seem to have little understanding of how to fully utilize them. Chickens are very popular to eat and to keep, even to buy and sell, but what in The States we'd consider basic knowledge is lacking here.

No one in our village sells or eats eggs, which are a great source of protein, fats and vitamins- things noticeably and detrimentally lacking from local diets. There are no chicken houses in our village, and these could easily be built out of locally available material (sticks and grass, the same things they use to make insaka roofs and bathing shelters). These houses would provide a localized place for hens to nest, allowing easy egg collection, and for collecting manure to use on fields, gardens and in fishponds. Many free-roaming chickens are snatched by predator chicken hawks or die from Newcastle disease, for which there is a free vaccine available at the Ministry of Livestock district office just 4 km away. However, the vaccine is not widely administered. Last year, a pastor in the boma lost 39 of his 40 chickens to Newcastle disease- that's 39 nutritious family dinners or 1.17M Zkw ($234 USD) when sold at market price of 30,000 Zkw ($6 USD) each.

Another notion has occurred to me in facilitating these chicken workshops and analyzing the business of keeping chickens, especially broilers. Granted, poultry rearing is slightly more capital-intensive than fish farming. However, keeping broilers seems less labor-intensive than fish farming, and selling a batch of broilers every 6 weeks seems to bring in more household income, and more often, than fish farming- which runs on a 6-month harvest cycle. So, while there is a higher barrier to entry (i.e. more start-up capital required) to a small broiler operation, the resulting profitability for keeping broilers is much higher per cycle and per year than keeping fish on the village level.

This is not at all to say that fish farming should be abandoned. Fish are a very popular relish (i.e. side dish to the staple nshima) and there is no end to demand for it. Zambians LOVE their fish! (Slightly more than they love to eat chicken). Also, fish present a varied source of protein, vitamins and minerals that is important to the Zambian diet. I just mean to point out that perhaps the rural populations could be well served by putting more effort into poultry training than we currently see in our community.