Pedro Filipe Real Bande

Community Vaccinator

Village Champion Pedro

MOZAMBIQUE

“For the March 2015 vaccination campaign, even before starting the vaccination, there were already 114 families who requested the vaccination of their chickens and I did vaccinate 2,243 chickens and everyone paid for the vaccination.”

My name is Pedro Filipe Real Bande, I am from Sussendenga district in Manica province. In 2012, I was selected and trained as a community vaccinator for the control of Newcastle disease in village chickens. At that time, the training was based on the use of Ita-New vaccine, which is administered through intramuscular injection. After the training I started the vaccination activity in Sussendenga, but in 2013 I moved to another community called Zixixe but still in Sussundenga district. Here, I continued with the chickens’ vaccination activity. In June 2014, we were told that we would no longer use Ita-New and received training to start using I-2 vaccine. As this was a new vaccine, for the first vaccination campaign (July 2014) the communities were reluctant to provide their chickens to be vaccinated. Out of the 350 families in the community, only 24 accepted to vaccinate their chickens. But as I was always vaccinating my chickens, the mortality almost disappeared and the number of chickens increased a lot. Because before the vaccination my chickens usually died, when I started to vaccinate them in 2013, I had only 29 chickens and in November 2014 I had 374 chickens and my selling’s, also increased.   In December 2014, I was able to sell 80 chickens and earned about 12.000, 00 meticais (mts). My neighbours started asking why my chickens were so productive; why the chicks did not die; how could I manage to sell so many chickens and still remain with a big number. In response I only told them that I vaccinate my chickens regularly for them not being attacked by Xigubo-gubo disease. I also feed the chickens with maize husk. When I don´t have enough maize husk at home, I buy in the local market, 1 bag of 100 kgs costs 200.00 mts. As we were also taught how to build poultry houses using local materials I keep the chickens in this house. Besides chickens I also raise cattle (27 cows), 12 goats and I grow some crops for my family. Apparently after seeing the number of my chickens increasing, my neighbours got convinced about the efficacy of this vaccine.

Madai Njou

Cooperative Poultry Farmer

Village Champion Madai

TANZANIA

“Before the project I had five chickens. Now I have 150!”

Mr Madai is from Unjangwe village in Singida, Tanzania. Around 10 years ago he began to keep poultry but generally kept only a few birds since they would inevitably die of ND around September or October every year. Before the project started vaccination against ND was haphazard, so there was really nothing that could be done to control ND. When the system of organised vaccination campaigns and community vaccinators was introduced, he was among the first to accept it and has seen the benefits.

None of Mr Madai’s birds have died of ND since the project started and his flock has grown considerably. A major part of his income is from egg sales; generally he sells no fewer than 30 eggs per day (@ TZS 250 per egg).

Mr Madai is a progressive farmer and received training on improved poultry husbandry from the project, together with the Community Vaccinators. The training included preparing supplementary feed for the chickens, based on locally available ingredients such as bulrush millet, a major crop in the area. Mostly Mr Madai’s chickens scavenge for their food but he provides some supplementary feed prepared according to project training and also ‘grows’ termites to feed his birds.

Together his neighbours he has formed a cooperative group that all raise birds and produce eggs. The group is well organised with a Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer. All group members are doing well.

Mr Madai sells eggs from his small village shop.

One of the benefits of being in a group is that buyers are attracted to the village to buy eggs (used mainly for hatching) and the group get a better price for their eggs. They normally also sell a lot of chickens but are now organising for sales in December when the price is high due to festivals.

Mr Madai and his neighbours are extremely thankful for the project – they remember the effects of ND from before the project and now realise the great benefits of vaccination. With vaccination, they are assured that the birds will survive and can now decide when to sell “We sell chickens and eggs when we want to!”