Tag Archives: Fowl

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

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Why did the chicken cross the road? To meet up with the duck and goose on their way to ending hunger and poverty around the world, of course. That may not be how you remember the story, but it is happening every day thanks to generous donors like you.

Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Rudik, a 12-year-old and the “man of the family” since his father died several years ago, learned how to run a business and take care of chickens as a member of Heifer’s Yes! Youth Clubs in Armenia. Now he has a growing chicken farm and dreams of providing his mother and sister with ever comfort of a happy life.

Huynh Van Thong, 11 year old, holds a duck in the Tan Hung Commune of Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

Sarom Chou and her husband live with their four children in Cambodia. They once depended on rice to live, but it was never enough. They now raise ducks and chickens. They use the manure for compost, improving their land quality and crop production, and use the increased crop production to feed their animals. It’s a win-win. Sarom said, “Before joining the project, we only had income from our small grocery shop, but now we have diversified income from homestead gardening and poultry that keeps increasing. We have enough money to invest in our children’s education.”

source: www.incredibleegg.org

Chickens, duck and geese provide many benefits including manure and additional income, as mentioned above; but even more important for the families now eating more eggs are the vitamins and protein they are receiving. As you can see in the chart, you can’t beat the protein from eggs.

Eggs contain all the essential protein, minerals and vitamins, except Vitamin C. Egg yolks are one of few foods that naturally contain Vitamin D. Eggs also contain choline, which is necessary for healthy cell membranes in the body. Choline stimulates brain development and function and helps preserve memory. Eggs also are good for your eyes because they contain lutein, which helps prevents age-related cataracts and muscular degeneration. In fact, eggs contain more lutein than spinach and other green vegetables.

And who doesn’t love eggs?

Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Donate to help impoverished families have eggs every day with chickens, ducks or geese today.

Protein-packed eggs from these small animals can make a life-saving difference. Imagine what a flock can do.

This post is part of our What to Give series, where we’re helping you choose the best Heifer gift for your loved ones. Read previous What to Give posts here, and subscribe to the What to Give series here.

Still don’t know what to give? Check out our entire online Gift Catalog.

Wild Birds Improve Georgian Households

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Story and photos by Marina Kazaryan, project assistant, Heifer Georgia.

Pheasants.
As the legend has it, in the 5th centuryA.D. King Vakhtang I Gorgasali was hunting in the woods, when his falcon caughta pheasant. Fighting in the air, both birds fell into a spring nearby and diedbecause the water was boiling hot. Astonished by such unusual naturalphenomenon, King Vakhtang ordered to build a town around the hot springs. Thisis how Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, came to life. Ever since, pheasants wereconsidered almost as a symbol. However today they are not as easily found inthe natural habitat. So much more curious it is to learn that in a village ofTeleti several kilometers away from Tbilisi there is a farm breeding the wildbirds.

The Laliashvilis family.
The Laliashvilis are a family of six: Tengiz (40),his wife Ekaterine (37), daughters Teona (18) and Nino (3), son Giorgi (5) andhis mother Zhenia (68). Today they are owners of a developing pheasant farm,being a part of Heifer project. The beginning wasn’t easy though.

Since early youth Tengiz prepared himself for amilitary career. He completed the obligatory military service at 18, and eversince has been in the army serving all around the country. “We wouldn’t see himfor years sometimes”, says his wife Ekaterine. In the last military conflict severalyears ago Tengiz was wounded in the region of heart and was released fromservice. It was then that he decided to start a pheasant farm.

Pheasant breeding is quite an innovative branch ofagriculture in Georgia, Tengiz had to study the habits of the birds, experimentwith food and propagation. But several species that he owned were not enoughfor full-fledged farming. Family’s scarce income which was received fromselling incubators of his own construction could not cover costs for forage andveterinary needs.

Pheasants in the volary.
When Tengiz learned about Heifer International’sactivities in Georgia, he immediately decided to join. Here, as in everythingelse, his wife whom he has known since school days stood by his side. WithHeifer’s assistance Tengiz established a Farmers’ Association. Five originalfamilies got 15 “families” of pheasants, each consisting of one male and threefemales, as well as forage and additional training. “In a short period of timeI became quite a celebrity”, says Tengiz laughing. “People would hear about apheasant farm and come to see it, first from the neighboring villages and thenfrom more distant regions”. Some came as tourists but many got interested inthis new field.

Tengiz near the incubator.
This year Tengiz has already started the firststage of giving away nestlings in the Pass on Gift tradition of Heifer, andmeanwhile he is already preparing the second generation of receiving families,provides them with training in pheasant breeding and helps building incubators.“It’s a new area and people are eager to get involved because it opens up newopportunities”, explains Tengiz. When correctly treated, pheasants grow quitelarge, have tasty meat and are profitable for sale. Tengiz already has severaloffers for purchase of pheasants. He also wants to prepare a certain part ofbirds for wild nature and release them into their natural environment to restoretheir traditionally large but today considerably decreased population.

Laliashvili’s elder daughter Teona became a studentof pharmaceutics last year, and their son Giorgi will go to school in theautumn. Their living standards have considerably improved, today they can allowthemselves heating and better products. The family has purchased a computerwhich is used for children’s education and for collecting more information onpheasants breeding and treatment. Tengiz built a complex of open-air cageswhere pheasant families can breed. In spring he plans to lay out a gardenaround the cages.

Tengiz with his children, taking care of the birds.
And it is not only economical conditions that haveimproved with the beginning of the project. “When I returned home after theinjury, poor income and unemployment were torturing me”, remembers Tengiz. “Istarted having serious psychological problems. Today I simply have no time for depression”.Everyone in the family have their part in the farm’s everyday life, from theyounger kids to the elderly granny who is very fond of their new inhabitants.Pheasant breeding consumes enough labour, keeping the entire family occupied.Birds must be fed, cages cleaned, eggs collected and you always have to keep aneye on new families to make sure the breeding goes the right way and does notspoil the pedigree.

“After all the difficulties we’ve been through,this farm returned Tengiz to the family”, says Ekaterine. “We will always be gratefulto Heifer International for giving us this opportunity to develop ourinitiative and making us even more united”.

Pick a Chick on Cyber Monday

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It’s Cyber Monday. Don’t let your boss catch you surfing the web for the best deal on a TV. Instead, let her know you’re spending your holiday savings ending world hunger. Pick a chick this Cyber Monday!

For just $20, a gift of chicks, ducks or geese can quickly turn into a sizable flock that can triple a family’s income. The fowl are easily managed as they require little space, and they can help control garden pests and improve soil quality. And through Heifer’s Pass on the Gift model, your gifts will continue to change communities for years to come. Can’t say that about the latest e-reader, now can you?

Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee

Anju Chaudhary lost everything she owned when a sudden flood struck her town of Bhandara, Nepal, several years ago. Not long after, Anju’s husband left the house one day and never came back. Anju suddenly found herself all alone with two little children to feed. That’s when she joined a local women’s group, and soon she received the gift of a chicken, which quickly produced eggs and chicks. Anju fed some of the eggs to her children and sold the rest for income. She now has 16 eggs ready to hatch. “We’ll have lots of chickens soon,” Anju says proudly.


Eggs
One large chicken egg contains more than six grams of protein, which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization indicates is about half the daily requirement for toddlers. Both chicken and duck eggs contain selenium, which helps build a strong immune system, and B vitamins that help convert food into energy. Plus, chickens and ducks can lay nearly 200 eggs a year.

More Land and Better Crops
Chickens, ducks and geese require little space, so families who have only small plots to farm can maximize what they plant. The fowl eat insects and remove weeds as well, which increases crop yields and provides more food to sell at market or to feed their families.

Increased Income
In addition to providing hundreds of eggs a year or hundreds of chicks, ducklings and goslings to sell at market, these animals thrive on food and garden scraps. That means families don’t have to spend a lot of money to feed the fowl, enabling them to pay for food, education and medicine.

Want to really impress your boss? Give her a Flock of Hope this holiday season. And if it doesn’t already, encourage your organization to participate in our employer matching gifts program, turning your $20 or $60 gift into twice as many birds. Read more blog posts about how Heifer uses fowl to improve lives around the world.

Don’t feel like picking a chick? How about an alpaca, sheep, heifer or goat?

Know Your Animals: A Heifer Livestock Primer

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The López-Durán family of Bolivia with their sheep.
Photo by Christian DeVries

As the holiday season approaches, you might find yourself debating which Heifer gift will be the best for Aunt Franny or the Boss. Well stress no more! Over the next few weeks, I’ll dive into the wide spectrum of livestock and other agricultural items we put to use in our projects all over the world. Look forward to learning more about:

Goats
Heifers
Sheep
Llamas
Chicks, ducks and geese
Tree seedlings
Honeybees
Water buffalo
Pigs
Rabbits
Camels

Monsoon Floods Can’t Break Thai Village’s Spirit of Sharing

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Every year, monsoon floods create more damage in one of Heifer Thailand’s targeted project villages, Pha Sam Yod. The village is settled in a valley with a stream running through it.


One late night in mid-October, while all villagers of Pha Sam Yod were sleeping deeply, a voice from the loudspeakers announced that a massive flood was rapidly approaching the village. Residents rushed to gather their belongings, move their livestock to higher ground and save their own lives. They weren’t able to save everything before the village and road became submerged by water.


Two Self-Help Group (SHG) members, Bubpha Phupewnak and Nares Mulkate, each received one sow and two piglets from the Heifer project. Luckily, with help from fellow villagers, they were able to save their livestock from the massive floods. Since their families live close to each other, they put their pigs in one small pen that was away from high water.

In addition to being a challenging situation for humans, the flooding was no picnic for the animals. Sharing one small pen was uncomfortable, causing the animals to fight with each other, and Bubpha’s sow died. Losing her belongings and beloved animal made Bupha very sad, but neighbors and Heifer Thailand staff comforted her and plan to help her find a new sow.


Before the flood, other SHG members and villagers lost their chickens from a pandemic disease. Unaffected families willingly gave chickens from their healthy flocks to their neighbors who lost poultry.

The Pha Nok Kao people have to cope with natural disasters, but their compassion for each other is visibly increasing. Also, the disasters have provided lessons to be better prepared for the future and minimize their losses.

Chickens = Hope in South Africa

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Original story by Magdalena Wos, Heifer International South Africa Country Program resource development officer.

After months of preparations, the dreams of 100 members of the Sukuma Poultry Project came true on Saturday as Heifer provided them each chickens.

Sukuma Poultry Project is located in Mabhaleni Village, near Port Shepstone, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The Sukuma group was initially established in 2008 and was primary concentrated on broiler production. But without the necessary skills and faced with high feed costs, members of Sukuma group were struggling to generate income and make their businesses profitable. Finally, they decided to contact Heifer and ask for assistance.

Heifer International South Africa started to work with the group at the beginning of this year. A total of 172 initial members of Heifer’s Sukuma Poultry project received training on poultry management, vegetable production and gender equality. On July 18,2011, they were provided with fruit trees like mango, banana or avocado. But the biggest change, a gift of livestock, was still ahead of them.

During last couple of months, families and Heifer staff worked hard together to prepare chicken enclosures and get the farmers ready to receive livestock. Over the past two weekends, for the first 100 project members the happy day finally came, and 2,550 chickens were delivered to them. The chickens will begin laying eggs within days, providing a rich source of protein to the families and income from selling eggs to others in their communities.

The remaining 72 families will receive chickens during next couple of months.

Serinda Swan Visits Heifer in Cambodia

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 Heifer International’s projects in Cambodia got a special visit from a Hollywood actress recently. Serinda Swan is the star of the A&E drama Breakout Kings, and she’s also a big Heifer supporter.  She was adventurous enough to travel to some rural villages in the Svay Chrum district, where she visited families whose living conditions have been improved with gifts of chickens and pigs from Heifer.


Serinda supports Heifer International because it connects her interest in animals with her concern about global poverty. She says, “Being able to go on a trip into the countryside with Heifer International was an amazing experience for me. The work that they do is so diverse and vast it blew me away.”

Serinda says she was especially touched to witness a Passing On the Gift® ceremony, where families who had received Heifer animals passed on the first offspring to other needy families. She says it was amazing to witness the generosity that was expressed, and to know that each Heifer gift was multiplying in the community.
 
 
Serinda visited a children’s group where village children learn about responsible living. “They sang and taught me how to play some of their instruments. I may need to come back a few times to master them,” Serinda jokes. “But their hearts were so big and welcoming, I felt right at home.”

Serinda also saw a reading group made up mainly of women. As part of its projects, Heifer conducts training in skills like literacy, community leadership, and building small businesses. Serinda says it was impressive to see how group members participated and encouraged each other.
 
 
 
 
“There is so much more Heifer is doing than just supplying people with animals,” she says. “It’s wonderful to see.”
 
 
Serinda is now back in the United States working to raise awareness of hunger and deprivation. She says her visit to the Heifer Cambodia project was eye opening and reinforced her respect for Heifer’s sustainable community development.
“I plan on going back next year and visiting everyone again,” Serinda says. “I cannot wait to see how far they have come, with the courage and determination that I witnessed.”

World Egg Day: Are Backyard Chickens Right For You?

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Happy World Egg Day!

We talk a lot about how chickens (and ducks and geese) and their eggs can have a great impact on Heifer project participant families. But you don’t have to live on a farm in Honduras (or even Indiana) to see the benefits of raising domestic birds for their eggs.

Purslane in her chicken tractor 

In fact, my family has a tiny flock of chickens in our backyard. In Little Rock, Arkansas. In my neighborhood, this is actually not that uncommon (admittedly, most of the other chicken-raising families are friends of ours).

The decision to take on an animal, whether a pet or livestock, should be made after careful consideration and even research. The same is true for backyard chickens. We decided to begin raising chickens for several reasons: we want to have eggs from animals we know are healthy and well taken care of, we want to reduce our “footprint” by having a source of food right out our back door, and we want our daughter to know where some of her food comes from.

Here are a few things to consider if you’re thinking about raising chickens in an urban setting.

  • Do you like eggs? This seems obvious, but if you really only sort-of like them, they won’t be worth the investment of time and money. If you do a lot of baking, however, these are the freshest eggs you’ll ever have.
  • Is your yard/situation appropriate for chickens? Our flock started out in a bottomless pen (sometimes called a chicken tractor), but now they’re totally free range, which wouldn’t be possible without our six-foot security fence (or with bloodthirsty dogs). Our friends down the street have a chicken coop.  
  • Are you even allowed to have chickens? The best way to find out is to check the municipal code for your city. The requirements in Little Rock are that chickens must have a minimum of three square feet of floor space per bird over four months of age, they must be kept at least five feet from the owner’s residence, and they must be kept at least 25 feet from the nearest neighbor. Pretty laid back. Just across the river in North Little Rock, however, you have to have a permit, and the minimum distance from neighboring houses is 75 feet (this was a deal-breaker for a friend of mine thinking of starting a flock).
  • How many do you want? Chickens lay an egg about every 24 to 26 hours. We started out with four chickens, and for the three of us, we were up to our eyeballs. It’ll make you pretty popular with your friends and colleagues if you’re always giving away eggs. We now have two gals, and this seems to be a good number for us to maintain. We always have eggs when we want them, and though we aren’t giving them away by the dozen anymore, we can generally be relied on for friends in a pinch.
A common misconception is that you have to have a rooster, or else your hens won’t lay eggs. This is not true. You need a rooster if you want your eggs to hatch into baby chicks. But if you’re raising chickens in your backyard so you can eat the eggs… you probably don’t want that to happen. Many cities won’t allow the noisy boys anyway.
If your’e interested in chickens, here are a few things to check out:

Happy World Egg Day

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It’s World Egg Day!

Eggs are awesome. Highly nutritious, easy to store and prepare. You can eat all sorts of eggs: chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, and more. There are loads of ways to eat them: hard boiled, scrambled, poached, fried, and on and on. You can read more about eggs in last year’s winter World Ark.

Many Heifer participant families raise chickens or ducks for their eggs. They’re a great way for a family to  help meet their protein needs; and with a large enough flock, earning some income off the surplus is a real bonus.

Give the gift of chicks, ducks or geese, and empower families to provide for themselves.

Stay tuned throughout the day as we celebrate World Egg Day here on the Heifer Blog.