The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
POULTRY producers under the Inclusive Poultry Value Chain (IPVC) project have started to implement the use of renewable energy technologies as energy plays a crucial role in poultry production.
The IPVC project is part of a larger EU-funded Zimbabwe Agricultural Growth Programme (ZAGP) that was launched in Zimbabwe in June 2019. The 40-million-Euro initiative seeks to boost the beef, dairy, pig, goat and poultry production.
According to the latest newsletter from the ZAGP, in a typical chicken house energy is used for several applications, most importantly for lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling.
“IPVC is contributing to an inclusive green economy in Zimbabwe by piloting green technologies in poultry production, with the aim to reducing the environmental impact of the production activities. To date, the project has successfully installed 24 green technologies which include 4 x 20 cubic metre fixed dome and tubular biogas systems for heating, five solar lighting systems and 14 solar powered incubators,” read part of the newsletter.
It also noted that the solar lighting systems and incubators are now fully functional, while some of the biogas systems await commissioning. ZAGP said the installations of more green technologies is underway mainly targeting lead farmers and producer group across all the clusters.
The newsletter also added that the biogas systems are to be fed with waste daily to avoid any glitches in functionality and waste fed includes any bio-degradable waste around the household and other livestock waste including chicken waste.
A lead farmer from Murehwa district, Mashonaland East Mr Simbarashe Nyamanjiwa said the bio-digester system will assist farmers make savings.
“With the inception of the bio-digester, we are looking to make a saving of about 20cents per bird. We were running our cycle with 200 bags of charcoal at $10 per bag. Substituting with gas produced by our own bio-digester will provide a huge saving at day 35, making our birds more affordable and more competitive on the market,” said Mr Nyamanjiwa.
He also noted that he had a fixed dome biogas system installed and tested at his farm and the test proved that the system was working perfectly and was given a green light to place his day-old chicks.
Mr Nyamanjiwa added: “We have been capacitated to go further and if this biodigester really works, even after the project ends because with our savings, we can now construct another bio-digester to cater for more production should we intend to increase our number of birds per cycles.”
In terms of the solar lighting systems which aims to improve access and availability of lighting in poultry housing units and have proved to be ideal for producers that are off-grid and in areas with frequent power cuts, one farmer from Gweru in the Midlands province has benefited.
Mr Clever Manonga who received a photovoltaic lighting system for his batch of 3 000 layers, said the system has increased his production rate to 85 percent.
“After receiving the solar system, my batch of 1000 layers which was at the end of its cycle and ready for the market continued producing eggs. I have layers nearing the end of their cycle, and were supposed to be at 65 percent production, but the introduction of the lighting system kept the production rate 85 percent,” said Mr Manonga.
The solar lighting systems’ sizes are dependent on the size of the poultry farm and improved lighting in poultry production especially in commercial layers acts to artificially increase day length and this stimulates increase in egg production.
He added that he was planning on getting the eggs tested for calcium in the event that egg production for this batch continues at such an unusual rate for layers at the end of their cycle.
ZAGP also added that the installation of solar powered incubators has assisted farmers with easier access to hatching facilities at a lower price.
The mechanical hatching over natural hatching has an advantage that it improves productivity in birds as hens quickly go back into laying as they do not need to spend time brooding the eggs.
“With no interruptions to incubator power supply, mechanical hatching has high hatchability as compared to natural hatching. In some of the clusters where producers benefited with solar incubators, farmers had been traveling long distances to access hatching services, thereby incurring high transportation costs,” read part of the newsletter.
ZAGP is complemented by the Zimbabwe Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Services (ZAKIS) which is mandated to work with the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement to coordinate market-oriented education and extension services across the five value chains.
