Kidapawan City – Backyard chicken farming, long considered as just a source of meat and eggs for families in the countryside, could help reduce rural poverty in Mindanao if implemented as a well-planned agricultural industry with a complete value chain.
But it has to be done right and lessons must be learned from previous Poultry Dispersal Programs implemented by both the national and local governments.
What were the problems encountered in previous Chicken Disperal Programs by government?
1. Farmer-beneficiaries were not trained on proper rearing of free-range chicken, including health management practices;
2. The chickens distributed in the program were either mongrels which came from doubtful sources or the commercial brown egg layers which were not properly acclimatized;
3. After the dispersal, the farmer-beneficiaries were just left on their own and were not guided on how to properly feed their fowls or how to address simple health issues like “sipon,” “halak,” roup and other common poultry diseases;
4. There is no complete value chain and the farmer-beneficiaries failed to exploit the great demand for free-range chicken because they have no access to the market.
I am now working on a model of a Community-Based Backyard Chicken Farming Program where all farmer-participants are linked up and contributors to the production of a targeted volume of dressed or live chicken.
The Manok Pinoy, a new breed of chicken which I have developed over the last 10 years as a farmer and breeder, will be key to the implementation of this program.
This will be piloted here in my village, Paco, Kidapawan City with my immediate neighbors as farmer-cooperators.
I will select five families with enough space in their farms to set up a breeding yard.
Here is my set-up:
1. All of them will have to undergo an On-Job-Training Program in my farm so that they will understand the basics of backyard free-range chicken farming;
2. Each will be given used fishing nets to enclose the breeding yards and 20 cockerels with 100 pullets, all of which will be valued and paid back from their production;
3. Their counterpart will be a small shed in the breeding yard and laying nests, along with feeding and water troughs which could be made from bamboo poles;
4. They will be supplied with a weekly ration of our own formulated feeds and biologics needed to address health issues and they will be visited by our barefoot poultry technicians weekly. Payment for the feeds will be deducted from their production;
5. When the egg production starts, the farmer-beneficiaries will have the option to have the eggs hen-hatched or to bring the eggs for hatching in our incubators every seven days;
6. After hatching, the chicks will be given the initial vaccinations and returned to the farmer beneficiaries for rearing until they are 3-months old.
7. All of healthy pullets produced by farmer-beneficiaries will be acquired by my farm, including 10% of his cockerels. He will be given the option to sell the rest to the market or to my farm at an agreed price.
This set up is a result of years of study on how to lift our people out of poverty by helping them help themselves.
Based on the actual farm production and computations we made, a farmer with 100 hens with a 30% daily laying rate and a survival rate, from hatching to rearing, of only 70% could realize a gross income of no less than P90,000 a month.
Are there risks?
Of course. Meron talagang magiging palpak dito. Posibleng katayin ang manok o ipuslit at di ibenta sa akin para makaiwas sa pagbayad.
But it is worth the risk because if only half of every 100 families which will be covered by this scheme would do well and succeed, that means 50 families lifted out of poverty.
I hope and pray that the families which will be included in this initial piloting program would respond positively and succeed.
In all the years that I have been in public service and governance, I have always found inspiration in the statement made by Bishop Fulton Sheen who said:
“God’s greatest glory is man fully alive!”
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