Progress report
The Mukono Child Development Center set up a hatchery project in Mukono Nabuti, Uganda, with the purpose of giving registered children and their caregivers an opportunity to learn poultry farming skills for income generation. As they continued to feed the initial stock of parent chickens, center leaders and beneficiaries realized there was a need for a chicken-feed miller.
After receiving the funds graciously provided by Amplify Church to purchase the miller, leaders at Deliverance Church Mukono set up a committee to spearhead the procurement process. The machine was purchased and assembled and is now operational.
Out of 180 caregivers and 180 children and who are intended to benefit from this intervention, the center has identified 70 caregivers who are in the first phase of making and using feed from the miller. In addition, 20 young people have also learned how the machine works as well as the importance of poultry farming as a micro-enterprise.
The youths are grateful to the center for considering to train them in poultry farming. They look forward to benefit from the existing hatchery and the newly installed miller. The rest of the target beneficiaries will be trained in 2018.
Learning valuable new skills
This activity was designed to equip caregivers and their household members to make and access chicken feed for poultry farming. Operating the miller involves manual work, such as carrying maize grain and mixing with other ingredients, such as silver fish, which is the source of protein for the chicks. Training in the operation of the machine has started by focusing on the Compassion-registered children.
The youths have learned:
- the value of poultry farming
- proper methods of milling poultry feed, storage and using poultry feed in a hygienic environment to prevent diseases
- the importance of vaccination
- stages at which chicken vaccination should be administered by professionals
- the standards of poultry housing
- basic poultry feeding practices
- entrepreneurship skills
Achieving objectives
This activity has two objectives. The first one is to equip 180 children and an equal number of their caregivers with chicken feed production skills by May 2018. So far, 25 percent of those beneficiaries have been trained.
The second objective, with a May 2018 target, is to reduce by 50 percent the cost of purchasing chicken feed by using locally grown grains. To address this objective, the caregivers bring the grain and grind it themselves, which reduces the cost of the feed. The miller is also located in the same community where the caregivers raise the chickens, which reduces on the cost of transport.
Impact
The benefits of this poultry project have begun to be realized. For example, Samuel, whose daughter Justine is a registered beneficiary, says that after getting 230 birds, he raised them, sold them and was able to buy a cow. At the time of this report, he still practices poultry farming and is one of the people using the miller to access the feed. Recently, he received 70 kg (154 lbs) of starters’ mash, which he is using to feed his chicks.
