Lembeni Community opts for Poultry keeping as Income Generating activity

Margret Nesfory is a well-known PLHIV who lives in Kisekibaha, a suburb of Lembeni village. A village found in the lowland of Mwanga district, characterized by semi arid climatic conditions. It is one of the 25 villages SMECAO has intervened in as part of the Uwezo project FY 2013/2016.

Like in so many other villages in the district, people in Lembeni lacked skills in improving poultry keeping. Only few chickens were hutched and only 2 out of 8-10 survived due to infectious and viral diseases. Furthermore, few eggs were laid, they had no knowledge on how to produce poultry feeds locally and the activity had been done as a custom and not as an economic activity.

Margret Nesfory was among a group of 35 PLHIV in Lembeni ward who attended poultry keeping skill trainings. These included skills on how to construct improved poultry rearing sheds, select best breed chickens for rearing, hutch multiple chicks at once, use local materials for making poultry feeds, understanding poultry infectious/ viral diseases and treatments, record details and how to use local herbs in treating and preventing poultry infections.

At the end of the training, all trainees had to develop an action plan of implementation by selecting skills that could be applicable to their household poultry keeping project.

Few months after the training session, widow Nesfory has applied the skills learned. As a result, from Oct 2014 to March 2015 she achieved to raise the no. of chickens from 19 to 67. Also she succeeded to sell 7 chickens for prices ranging from 10,000 to 15,000Tshs and 1200 eggs for 250, earning 375,000 Tshs. For six months, she has paid a total of 85,400Tshsfor feeds like purchasing maize husks or vaccination. Having in mind that other materials for chicken feeds can be found locally, this means that she had a total profit of 289,600 Tshs within 6 months.

This is what widow Nesfory says about her experience: “Poultry keeping is my life blood stream, the only source of income that I have had since I could not do manual work such as cultivation any longer due to my weak health. This is the easiest income generating activity I can imagine; it has taught me how to make money from something I used to regard as nothing.”