Poultry's rearing is an integral part of agri-business in the farming communities. About 90 per cent of rural households in Bangladesh rear poultry and it is an important source of cash income for rural poor families. Local breeds (desi) predominate in rural traditional poultry keeping, with small flocks kept under a scavenging system with feed made up of household waste, homestead pickings and crop residues. With the absence of additional feeding and animal health inputs, the productivity of the local hens is low and losses due to diseases and predators are high. The productivity of the local hen is about 40-60 eggs per year, compared to an industrial battery hen, which lays 280 eggs annually.

The main target group of PLDP activities is destitute women. Experience has shown that poor rural women are constrained to manage the entire household with extremely limited resources, and therefore they develop as better managers than their male counterparts. When a woman benefits, her entire household benefits and the impact is more sustainable. Traditionally the ownership of backyard poultry is almost entirely in the hands of women and therefore poultry are a unique tool to reach the poor women with minimum disturbance of the patriarchal family pattern.

The development of the semi-scavenging poultry-rearing concept as implemented in PLDP has been under development over several years. The development started in the early 80ėties in collaboration between the Department of Livestock Services (DLS) and a national NGO (BRAC). Initially, efforts were made to increase the productivity of local breeds by cockerel exchange, but it failed due to various reasons. In order to reduce bird mortality, a trail was introduced were poultry birds were vaccinated regularly in five intervention villages for one year. The positive results in terms of reduction in mortality rate and increase in bird population led to the conclusion that vaccination must be an integral part of any intervention to promote poultry rearing as an income earning activity.

It was then decided to involve women in the vaccination work and to let them vaccinate for a fee, using vaccines supplied free of cost from the government. However, it was under this programme observed that the pullet supplied by the government and other farms were in short supply and suffered high mortality in the scavenging rearing system. It was therefore decided to buy day old chicks from the government farms and let selected, trained and supervised rural women rear the day old chicks for two months in confinement in houses built on their homestead plots and thereafter sell the chicks to other women. The advantage was that the chicks would become better adapted to the rural environment. These initiatives led to the development of a rearing model that has been and is still under constant development. The model includes supply of improved chicks, common disease prevention and training in improved rearing under semi-scavenging conditions.

The basic feature of the model is a smallholder with some 10 hens supported by a number of small entrepreneurs, all available in the village, to provide the inputs and the services needed to maintain the flock. The concept is glued together by community groups, awareness programmes, training, and access to micro-credits. Even though the different entrepreneurs are established as an integrated production chain, each unit operates on free market conditions and is free to sell to customers outside the chain.

In relation to the model a substantial amount of research has taken place and among the findings is that cross-breed hens from a Fayomi hen and a RIR cock is among the best to cope with the semi-scavenging rearing system and at the same time have a high egg production.

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The poultry model is simple in its basic design but aspects have been added to improve the model and that makes the complete model rather complicated. The basic model is a supply chain consisting of the following elements/beneficiaries:

Pullet Rearer:
Small rearing farm receiving the breeding stock such as Fayoumi pullets of 2-3 months of age and the requisite number of Rhode Island Red cockerels of one month old from Government Poultry Farms and rear those up to 18 weeks of age, where they are sold to Model Breeders. (2 Pullet Rearer per Area Office).

Model Breeder:
Small low cost parent farms with a breeding stock of 54 Fayoumi hens and the requisite number (6) of Rhode Island Red cocks received either from the project site or directly from Government Poultry Farms. The Model Breeders are to produce quality fertile eggs to be used for hatching purpose. The fertile eggs are in the basic model to be sold to Mini Hatcheries but a substantial part of the fertile eggs will be sold to Key Rearers who hatch them under local (desi) broody hens. (24 Model Breeders per Area Office).

Mini Hatchery:
Small low cost hatcheries operated with solar energy and kerosene. Black pillows filled with rice husk are heated in the sun or by means of kerosene and the eggs are placed in a cylinder between two pillows for hatching. Each hatchery has a capacity to hatch 1,000 chickens per month or alternatively ducklings. In the basic model the day old chicks are sold to the Chick Rearers but Key Rearers also purchase day old chicks to be reared by the broody hen. (6 Mini Hatcheries per Area Office).

Chick Rearer:
Small rearing farms, each with a capacity of 200-300 chickens/batch and 4 batches per year. The chickens are reared in low cost houses from day-old to 8 weeks of age. The chickens are fed with balanced feed. The 8-week-old birds are mainly to be distributed to the Key Rearers. (40 Chick Rearers per Area Office).

Key Rearer:
Small farms with only around 5 crossbreed layers for the production of table eggs. The hens are kept under semi-scavenging conditions and fed with 30-70% supplementary feed. Additionally 4 local (desi) hens are kept to hatch eggs preferably from Model Breeders and rear chicks from Mini Hatcheries. (About 3853 Key Rearers per Area Office and this group consist 95% of the beneficiaries

Besides the above outlined basic model, or supply chain, there are some beneficiaries involved in servicing the poultry keepers:

Poultry Workers:
A number of Poultry Workers are trained to vaccinate the birds to control diseases. The vaccine is supplied through the Area Office and the Poultry Worker charges a vaccination fee. (100 Poultry Workers per Area Office).

Feed Seller:
The Feed Sellers are trained to mix feed or sells pre-mixed feed to make available the necessary supplementary feed to the poultry keepers. (10 Feed Sellers per Area Office).

Egg Collectors:
Table eggs are collected from the Key Rearers by Egg Collectors to be supplied to a community sale centre or to the wholesaler at the near by market. (10 male Egg Collectors per Area Office).

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The credit received by the women involved in the poultry model is between US $ 16 and US $ 86. This credit has to be repaid in weekly instalments normally starting from week one and to be finalised within one year. The effective interest rate on the credit is around 30% per annum. The experience of repayment is that it is very high č normally close to 100%. One of the reasons for this high repayment rate is probably because the beneficiaries are organised in a group and under group pressure to keep their commitments.

It was experienced that the Key Rearers had difficulties within repayments before the pullets started laying. To overcome this problem the Key Rearers were instructed to keep some (4) desi hens for brooding purpose. This brooding activity quickly generates some income and is very profitable if managed according to guidelines (hen and chicks in confinement the first month and supplementary feeding to the chickens the second month).

The establishment of the poultry model in an area and the supply of input (day old chicks, parent stock, vaccine and drugs) are organised by an Area Office. An Area Office first has to identify the beneficiaries and get them organised in a group structure. Then the beneficiaries have to be trained for the various poultry activities they are going to get involved in. Finally the beneficiaries will receive a credit to enable them purchase the equipment and poultry stock needed for the poultry activity they have been trained. To make an Area Office financial viable experience shows that they need to service around 6,000 beneficiaries with financial services.

The involvement in the poultry model will generate some cash income but often not enough to change the life of the involved drastically. It is said that the income is appreciated as it is a steady income, and it so to speak giving the icing on the cake (financing school fees and uniforms for children, financing improved housing facilities and the like).

It might be that one of the most important outcomes of the womenės involvement in the poultry model is that they get exposed to operate a business with credit money. The normal practise is that when a beneficiary has repaid the first loan the beneficiary can obtain a new loan. For this second and subsequently later loans there are no restrictions in how this loan should be utilized as long as they maintain the poultry activity. It is often seen that these later loans are utilized for purchase of goats, a calf, a sewing machine or a rickshaw for their husband.

In addition, beneficiaries express that apart from access to financial services, another important benefit from being part of a village organisation is increased mobility and access to information and social networks, and further that this improves their status in the community.

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