The Sunday News
MORE than 90 percent of smallholder farmers own poultry in one form or another.
It could be chickens, guinea fowls or turkeys depending on the community.
This means poultry production is one sector of livestock production that has more potential to transform lives of smallholder farmers compared to all other forms.
This is because the initial investment costs for poultry production are much lower than any other sector of livestock production.
However, despite poultry production being versatile and nearly ubiquitous as a production sector, it is still dogged by a lot of production challenges that have made it difficult for most small holder farmers to move beyond rudimentary and subsistence level of production.
It is still a very common production practice even now to find a communal household that is keeping a sizeable number of chickens but with no chicken housing at all.
The chickens have to roost on trees or any such precarious places around the homestead.
So, come morning you have chickens disembarking from every other elevated position around the homestead, could be a tree that is ordinarily used for afternoon shade by the household, a scotch cart parked next to the granary or from the granary roof itself!
The point I am trying to illustrate is that the production method employed by most communal smallholder farmers is still so basic and almost premedieval in nature yet this is a sector which has a very real chance of improving livelihood means of most communal smallholder farmers.
Just a few tweaking and upgrading is needed on the production model to make it efficient and purposeful.
The starting point will be for poultry farmers to construct at least a basic housing structure for their chickens, guinea fowls or turkeys, whatever the case might be.
The housing should be sufficient enough to protect chickens from nocturnal predators as well as protect the chickens from harsh weather conditions.
Predation and bad weather contribute to high mortality in chickens especially chicks.
Hence by constructing a proper housing unit for your chickens you will help to minimise mortality losses that you have always incurred especially on chicks.
A proper housing will also provide a good nesting position for chickens that need to lay eggs.
The eggs will be protected from animals that might need to feed on them.
This means the clutch (number of eggs laid and incubated) size of your chickens will increase and invariably so does the number of chicks hatched.
This is indirect contrast to eggs that are just laid anywhere and everywhere around the bushes, exposing them to a number of vices including human theft.
Resultantly it is very common among smallholder farmers to find a whole hen coming out of incubation session with only two chicks because most of the eggs were either stolen or spoiled by unfavourable conditions.
The import of the submission here, is that a mere improvement on your poultry housing as a farmer will, reduce predation, reduce mortality and increase the clutch size of your chickens and subsequently increase the number of chicks hatched.
Another vital but missing aspect among most poultry farmers, is disease management.
This includes both disease prevention mechanisms and disease treatment processes.
Most poultry farmers have this unhealthy tendency to just watch their chickens, especially chicks, die of a disease without lifting a finger to get treatment drugs.
They just take it on the chin and count the losses and define it, as just one of those things!
Yet a simple antibiotic could have saved a lot of those lost chickens or chicks.
Another aspect is poor biosecurity procedures, which usually result in huge mortality losses for poultry farmers.
It is common practice that when a farmer identifies a hen or cock from a neighbouring village, he or she buys and then take it home. Half the time these bought in birds bring infection and suddenly your whole chicken lot is sick and dying in droves!
Most indigenous chickens are disease carriers especially of Newcastle disease and introducing them into your flock will result in disease importation into your birds.
Keeping the bought in birds separate from the rest of the chickens for at least three weeks, is a good standard biosecurity procedure that will help you to avoid introducing diseased animals into your healthy lot.
Finally, another important aspect that most smallholder poultry producers take for granted, is nutrition.
There is established nexus between nutrition for your birds and their production.
Chickens that get supplemented feed wise will produce more than those that rely only on free range scavenging.
In fact, when you find a homestead with a lot of chickens, look for the granary, chances are you will find that this is a strong farming homestead that produces enough to feed themselves and their chickens.
Food insecure and struggling homesteads will not have plenty chickens running around, and one of the reasons is simply nutrition.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
Mhlupheki Dube is a Livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity. Feed [email protected]
