Chicken flocks growing in Marracuene district, Mozambique
The delivery of chicken starter packs (3 hens and a rooster + a year’s vaccination for Newcastle disease) towards the end of 2017 to families in Marracuene district is starting to grow even bigger smiles on faces as new chicks are being born and flocks are growing.
Our dedicated team in Mozambique have been working hard to expand the reach of the Newcastle disease vaccination program for village chickens over the last 12 years. To date it is estimated they have directly reached over 162,650 families in 8 of the 11 provinces.
The latest #runCeliarun fundraising campaign will help grow our reach to even more families in the communities we work with.
“I am Berta Chilaule living in Mali village, Marracuene district. I am widow and unemployed and I am living with my four children of 25, 20, 18 and 15 years old respectively who are students and grandson of 5 years old.
The District Services of Women and Social Welfare usually helps us whenever they can. When this project came in, in 2017 I was selected as one of the beneficiaries to receive 3 hens and 1 rooster for reproduction and improve our nutrition and health.
This village was lucky to benefit from this project because apart from receiving village chickens to be raised in order to improve our nutrition and also get some cash when the hatched chicks grow up the project trained some community vaccinators that go round every four months to vaccinate our chickens against Newcastle disease . In November 2017, I received three hens and one roster. In January, two of the hens hatched fifteen chicks (one hatched five chicks and the other ten chicks) and other hen started laying eggs in January, so far has six eggs. The chicks have not yet been vaccinated because the vaccinator do not have the vaccine yet. We are planning to vaccinate them in March. When the chickens grow up, I am planning to sell some of them to pay school fees. I am happy and I would like to thank for this opportunity.”
Mrs Berta’s hen with some of her 10 chicks.
Mrs. Chilaule on the left is accompanied by Mrs. Ivone Chemane, the technician from the district Health, Women and Social Welfare Services.
This activity is part of a wider project funded directly by our loyal KYEEMA supporters in 2017. Its end goal is to improve food and nutrition security for families by: 1) decreasing household chicken mortalities; 2) increasing consumption of chicken meat and eggs; and 3) increasing income from the sale of chickens and eggs. More often than not, this extra income is spent by households on diversified foods and other immediate needs like medicines and school fees.
With help from the district Health, Women and Social Welfare Services, we have specifically targeted vulnerable women, children and people with HIV/AIDS to distribute the starter packs to – some 800 village chickens to 200 households without any chickens. These households receive training on how to build chicken houses, use local feed, and most importantly, control Newcastle disease (ND) and other chicken diseases. This includes monitoring the impact of vaccination against ND. The other activity funded in this project includes training community vaccinators to have their own business implementing ND vaccinations to households.
