By Manny Piñol
At the height of the 7-month El Niño last year when most farms were rendered unproductive by the rainless drought, I gave my cousin and neighbour, Neri Piñol Sodusta, 120 hens and 20 roosters for him to raise in his farm.
Our agreement was that he would produce fertilised eggs from out of the chicken I gave him, a new breed called Manok Pinoy which I personally bred and developed since 2010.
I bought the eggs he produced for P10 each and he was able to produce between 40 to 60 eggs a day.
In a few months, Neri was able to buy a new Kawasaki Bajaj motorcycle at a time when other farmers were literally going hungry.
Neri’s success story is something that many other farmers in the countryside have missed.
Backyard poultry raising is a farming activity that has long been neglected and farmers are missing a great income earning opportunity.
In fact, if you go to the rural areas now, farming families do not even have backyard chicken in spite of the wide ranging areas they have in their farms.
Farming families children could hardly eat fresh farm eggs.
Ask a farmer why he does not have free-range chicken in his farm and he will tell you that every year, unchecked poultry diseases, specifically the fatal Newcastle Disease (NCD) which causes chicken to just fall from their roost at night and die, wipe out their flocks.
There are at least four poultry diseases which could destroy backyard chicken and these are NCD, fowl pox, Avian Cholera and Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRD).
Government, however, has not launched a campaign to address these poultry diseases like the way it waged a campaign against rabies or polio.
In my recent trip to the US, I was joined by Dr. Ayong Lorenzo who owns a veterinary supply company called Excellence and he told me that his company has the vaccines and immunisation which could be used to totally eradicate poultry diseases in the country.
Last week, I directed Assistant Secretary for Livestock, Dr. Enrico Garzon, to design a 5-year National Backyard Poultry Development Program which would start in 2017 with a nation-wide vaccination and immunisation program of all free-ranged chicken.
After that, the Department of Agriculture will start a nation-wide distribution of backyard chicken breeding materials targeting 2 million farming families who will be given two roosters and 10 hens over the next four years.
If the chicken are bred and raised properly and without the threat of diseases, this simple program could bring in an estimated income monthly of P5-B for the 2 million families nationwide.
That’s a lot of money which will circulate in the countryside.
More than that, farming families will now be able to have enough supply of free-ranged chicken and eggs for their children.
This is an income-earning opportunity for the farmers that the Dept. of Agriculture under President Rody Duterte will not miss as we target to reduce rural poverty by the end of his presidency in 2022.
(Photo shows me and my cousin feasting on one whole Manok Pinoy for breakfast Saturday morning in the farm. Other photos showing my son, Imman, and the Manok Pinoy breeding stocks were all taken in my farm in Kidapawan City.)
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