Lylian RodrĪguez (UTA Foundation www.utafoundation.org) - Which are the feed ingredients and where are they coming from? Which are the main sources of protein in the system?
Hans Askov Jensen (Denmark) - In the first phase, interalia, field trails and full-scale village test, we use normally balanced commercial feed. After that we use what is locally available or we encourage the farmer to grow protein crops like soya. However, the main part of the feed consumed has to be scavenging feed. I know that University of Tropical Agriculture (UTA) do a great work to develop methods to produce animal feed from waste such as worms, larvae, and duck weeds, but I have not seen a possibility to integrate these methods into the first phase of the model development.
T R Preston (Cambodia)- The Bangladesh model is a sociological and organizational success but has few novel features from the technological viewpoint. This is very clear from Han's reply regarding the feed inputs. Hans proposes encouraging the families to grow "soya" which is somewhat at odds with the concept of local resource use. Out of interest I quote recent (2000-2001) yields from inter-cropping immature rubber trees on the best soils in Cambodia. Two crops of soybeans and one of mung beans totalled 2.4 tonnes/ha of seed in 13 months growth period, containing about 500 kg of protein. The comparison crop was cassava grown for forage which produced 56 tonnes/ha fresh foliage containing close to 2500 kg of protein - five times as much.
Of course you cannot feed cassava foliage to chickens, which is of course the big constraint in the Bangladesh model in its present form. Bangladesh has large water surfaces, not very good for cassava (and less so for soya) but ideal for duckweed and water spinach (Ipomoea acuatica), with yields equivalent to 4 to 5 tonnes of protein/ha. Both these feed resources are consumed by chickens, but with 90 to 94% moisture they present major constraints to ncorporation into "balanced" conventional feeds. This highlights the inflexibility of the model as it functions at present, and casts doubt on its long-term sustainability. It also emphasises the need for research into alternative feeding and management systems, which make efficient use of the natural tropical resources.
Harm de Vries (Venezuela) - On other places the type of supplementation (still restricted, making use of the comparative advantages of scavenging) could be the most important factor. It will be quite a challenge a find an optimal system.
Oluyinka Olukosi (Nigeria) - The greatest attraction of scavenging chickens enterprise is it's making good use of the scavengable feed. As Roberts (2000) pointed in the Tune workshop, it is essential to know the capacity of the feed resource base in an environment before embarking on scavenging chickens developmental work. It is a good sight seeing that scavenging chickens are improving the living standards of impoverished people. I am just afraid that if one does not take care of the feed resource base, the population might soon overgrow the carrying capacity of the feed resource base. The supplemetal feed requirement of the chickens will experience a hike in such a situation. Maybe, it is an unjustified or premature fear, those with experience in the field might wish to enlighten me.
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Frands Dolberg (Denmark) - A visit a couple of years ago to Papua New Guinea as member of an IFAD mission left me with questions. You find plenty of local feed resources and there is - at least in FAO č plenty of knowledge about these feed resources. Yet, feed, even for village level poultry production was imported from Australia.
Asifo O. Ajuyah (Fiji) - My point is that for sustainable utilisation of feed and non-feed resources, product output must be quantitative (higher yield per unit) and not numerical. Based on the classical concept of double conversion being more efficient in resource utilisation than triple conversion; i.e., soil nitrogen to plant nitrogen (double) versus soil nitrogen to plant nitrogen to animal protein (meat, egg and milk) [triple], the livestock industry in developing countries must encompass efficiency of production per unit.
Some overlapping activities in the model, which are duplicated within Enterprises for example, Government farms and Enterprise-3 (in supply of stock), also Enterprise-4 with Enterprise-5 (procure table eggs) may be considered.
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Thabani Maposa (Zimbabwe)- The Philippines paper says that the farmers have noted how mortality reduces the viability of their enterprises and have taken on confinement as the solution. I have found or always thought that it was the solution to mortality reduction. But alas farmers kill chicks due to starvation and will more often give supplement that are far from nutritious for instance in Zimbabwe they would give mealie meal and besides this being too fine it is not nutritive.
Tran Dinh Tu (Vietnam) - The village chickens obtain feed mostly from their natural environment by scavenging. Recently the nutrition of village chicken has been improved considerably by introducing a new technology to successfully raise earthworms at the household level-using ruminant and pig manure mixed with decayed rice straw.
Filomina dos Anjos (Mozambique)- I am interested in raising earthworms. Please send for me the technology.
Tran Dinh Tu (Vietnam) -The simple technology used to raise earthworms in Vietnam is as follows:- The earthworm species raised is Perionyx excavatus
- The best feed for earthworms is a mixture of bovine manure and decayed rice strain with ratio 1:1
- Earthworms may be raised in brick blocks, or wooden cases or woven bags with the sizes varying according to the production scale. At family level we often recommend the farmers to make simple small size wooden cases (50x50cm) or to use animal feed bags.
- Earth worms are fed every two days with the amount of mixture varying according to the quantity of earthworms raised and their hunger.
- The cases or bags are put under thatch houses and their surfaces are covered by carton or old cloths to be protected from sunlight and watered once a day to ensure the humidity of mixture to be 60 - 70%.
- The biomass of earthworm would double after four weeks raised according to such technology and can be harvested every week to feed chickens.
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Rene Benackaert (France) - cautioned about raising earthworms based on the following facts;
- Certain earthworm species (Eistenia fetida and Dendrobaena sp.) contain an anti-nutritional component anti-thiamine factor) which seems to be destroyed if the worms are sun dried.
- Worms represent intermediate hosts of several parasites
- Worms can accumulate important amounts of heavy metals
Robyn Alders (Mozmbique) - The extension material on Newcastle Disease (ND) control also includes recommendations on improved housing and supplementary feeding with locally available feedstuffs, especially for chicks. There is still much work to be done in the field of supplementary feeding. The work will need to cover both technical and social issues as we need to ensure that the recommendations are formulated in such a way that farmers are likely to adopt them and that they are cost-effective. Introducing interventions in addition to ND control usually requires a little more effort and a little more time. (ND control is lovely to work with because all you need is one outbreak to clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of vaccination.) When dealing with village chicken owners, who are also mixed farmers, we must also accept that not all of them will want to adopt every new intervention. Each new intervention requires more time and more investment and some farmers will prefer to put their efforts into other activities.
In my work on the village chicken production systems of Africa in the FAO Animal Health and Production Paper No. 42 of 1998, I emphasised on the importance of step by step poultry improvement in rural areas; an idea first brought up by Dr. W. Bessei. Fours year later and after having an opportunity to look into the rural poultry sector of more African countries I would still say emphasis should first be on use of the local resources (breed + feed) and improve on management first if we want to reach the poor of the poor. Then let the rural community move into improved breeds on their own initiatives.
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M.G.S. Yongolo (TANZANIA) - This has a reference to the communication of Thomas Kaudia and Aichi Kitalyi on village Poultry Production in Kenya.
My first observation refers to the table entitled "Productive characteristics of a good hen", which is missing. The one referred to as Table 1 is about Income projection from village chickens under improved management.
I would like to know whether the data on the number of eggs and clutches were obtained: through interviews only or by physical counting? If by interview, how reliable was the memory of farmers? In most rural households, farmers do not keep records. What was the level of literacy of the selected farmers interviewed? This could reflect the reliability and accuracy of the data. If physical counting was made, could similar results be found?
Secondly, in Tanzania the average number of chickens per household depends of the time of the year when the data are recorded and whether the farmers consider chicks as chickens when responding to question like, "how many chickens do you have"? The flock structure also changes with time. What is your experience on that from your study?
Referring to Characteristics and parameters of family poultry production in Africa: Results of a FAO/IAEA Co-ordinated Research Programme, my third comment is on the age stratification. It looked like you had only two groups (Adult and chicks), what about growers? What was the age limit for chicks? This information if available would help us to compare your results and what some of us are experiencing here in Tanzania and probably elsewhere.
I am delighted to see the high level of supplementation in your study area. Taking a quick calculation they are supplementing about 137.5 gms of carbohydrates and fishmeal per bird per week. This to me is very high compared to where you have no supplementation at all. What I do not understand is why with such a supplementation level the productive parameters on flock size and number of clutches are the same with what we are observing in our flock where no supplementation is practised! Does that mean that the scavengable feed resource base (SFRB) is very low or do the management practices deliberately restrict scavenging in the area? Or there are other environmental factors and diseases, which influence feed intake from SFRB and the supplements.
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Marco Cisneros (Ecuador) - We can profit a lot by the experience from Asia and Africa. Each project has its reality, in each territory, Our Ecuadorian case is similar in the general aspects, but it's different for the particular topics: such as feed, genetics, cultural approaches, economy, and others. Biosecurity and criteria from poultry industry are important to develop a family poultry project. In this way the industry agrees part of the financial support for this kind of project.
I have two questions:
1. I would like to know if the poultry industry is somewhere giving support to develop this kind of project? How are they working?
2. What about the poultry genetics banks? Are there regional Banks, or World banks?
Keith Hammond (FAO) - I am appreciating the many informative contributions to the Conference to date, and looking forward to reading future contributions.
Have been stimulated by today's informative paper by the Moroccan team to make a special request of all participants: without moving away from the important theme of course.
We are in process of developing a decision support system for use in-country to assist in the planning and implementation of more sustainable genetic improvement activity WITHIN the livestock development effort as a whole; with the system de-emphasising genetic theory and focus almost exclusively on application! The system will address all areas of programme development, the policy (local community to national), operational and technical elements of planning, getting started and further development, in the context of the development of the livestock as a whole (i.e. highlighting the need to also consider other elements of improved husbandry, feeds and feeding, disease management, marketing, etc; and at particular points in time some of these other elements being more important to address). The importance of involving local communities and structures and also of further developing capacity will certainly be included.
NOW: To best configure all areas of the decision support guidelines are useful, we need as many experiences (the good and the bad! such as mentioned by Drs Benabdeljelil and colleagues) as possible, and indeed also more detailed documentation for background. So we would greatly appreciate receiving from all participants both short and longer documentation covering (both the good and bad experiences of participants with planning, getting started and further developing genetic improvement activity AS AN ELEMENT OF chicken + development. By way of definition, by 'genetic improvement', we mean breeding systems which cover ALL types of genetic manipulation of local and introduced livestock populations - straight-breeding, crossing and replacement.
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