It is a
very well accepted fact that backyard poultry is a very rewarding pastime as
well as a source of income. There is enough research which has proved that backyard
poultry rearing improves household nutrition as well as empowers women.
However,
there are major challenges, especially in rural areas.
As part of
our Community Health project aimed at building up resilience in the local
communities against Climate Change, our team was involved in exploring
opportunities for income generation. One theme that was echoed across almost
all sections of the society was backyard poultry. Initially, it was about
vaccinating the birds from Ranikhet (Newcastle disease). We got some success by
going for vaccination campaigns. But, we found out that there was couple of
pertaining issues which needed to be sorted out.
The first
issue was of predators which preyed on the birds when they scavenged during
daytime and even at night. There were incidents of wild cats entering chicken
coops made of mud and killing off entire flocks of birds. The other predators
were snakes and various species of rats and mice.
The second
issue was of sustained feeding of the birds. Because of irregular and erratic
food availability, the birds took time to gain weight and therefore were not economically
productive.
The third
issue was of diseases - the main disease being Ranikhet (Newcastle disease).
We thought quite a lot about solutions. It was
very obvious that with a bit of change in practices and discipline we could
tackle the second and third issues without much problem. The major issue with
the first issue was to make a cheap chicken coop which will keep out wild cats
and snakes. There were quite a lot of designs available in the internet to make
quite beautiful chicken coops. The problem was the enormous cost.
While I was
in Kerala, I saw advertisements for cage like structures to keep 4-6 chickens
that cost about 2500 INR (40 USD, 25 GBP, 35 Euros) to make. The monthly earning of an
average family in our nearby village was hardly 2000-3000 INR. And most of the
poor earned less than that.
It was
obvious that we had to think of a new design. Dinesh, our maintenance manager
and I ultimate came up with a design. We decided to try it out ourselves as
well as among few families within the campus who consented to try it out. We had
no inkling about the success.
The
contraption was quite simple. We got 3 feet wide chicken mesh, which usually
came in rolls of 50 feet. We made cylinder structures using these mesh with a
diameter of 3 feet, height of 1.5 feet and circumference of 9.4 feet. On the
top of the cylinder, an opening was made with a mesh door. There was no use of
any other frame for this cage. The cost of one cage came to around 650 INR (10 USD, 7 GBP, 9 Euros). And
it could comfortably house 6 chickens.
Our family
has already kept 4 batches of chicken (each batch of 6 chicks) over the last 5
months. And it has been a roaring success. Many of our staff tried it and are
quite happy about it. Then, we moved out from NJH to Barwadih. Quite a lot of
people who saw the cages were very impressed.
And slowly
people started to enquire on where to procure these cages. And we started off a
small industry. The priests at the Catholic Ashram, Barwadih were very helpful.
We trained few local boys to make them.
In NJH, we
made about 20 cages for the staff and villagers before we moved out and at
Barwadih, we made about 40 cages in 2 months time.
Few snaps of what we've doing . . .
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| Sukhi - the first person who attempted our theory and succeeded. |
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| The initial days - one of the first cages being made at NJH |
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| A cage kept by one of the staff at NJH |
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| A cage in one of the nearby homes at Barwadih |
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| The 3 cages we used to have. We used to buy 6 chicks every 2-3 weeks which meant that we had regular chicken to cut |
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| The cages being made at Catholic Ashram, Barwadih |
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| Chicks ready for sale |
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| Ujwal, Amit and Manbodh . . . the first full time experts on the cage . . . |
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| Women . . . empowered . . . |
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| Going home with the cages |
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| It was not only the women . . . even the men were quite interested in the dynamics |
Well, I’m
sure there will be people who will be interested to do this in other places. As
of now, we’ve this being made at NJH and Catholic Ashram, Barwadih. There are 3
more places where few of my friends are exploring on start promoting this.
The
challenge is to have some funds to start off and to find the right people.
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