Happy Chickens for Fiji Food & Climate Emergency!

The Happy Chicken project reached another milestone in January, with over thirty thousand chicks produced and distributed over the past six years.  In 2018 we conducted happy chicken workshops at the training centre for communties from the remote islands of Taveuni, Kadavu, and Beqa, and from two communities from the province of Naitasiri.  

Our first workshop of 2019 started yesterday, with seven youth coming five hours by bus and carrier from the remote interior village of Nandelei in Tavua.  As always we have head-started chicks to the two-month old stage, so they have a high probability of survival and will begin laying in only four more months.  The community will take over a hundred of these back with them to grow into their own breeding flock.

Our hatchery is closed for two months as we are installing solar power thanks to a grant from New Zealand. Also the number of eggs laid is down to a tenth of what we get in the high season, as most of the hens are undergoing their annual molt, changing their feathers and building up resources for another year of laying.  All the hens free-range and have constant access to forage, their pen doors are open all day, which can be a problem at times with chicken poo on the doorstep or hens sometimes trying to hide a nest and hatch their own chicks.  We had three such renegade nests thatch last year, only seen when the mother hen parades her chicks into full view.  We quickly put the hen with her brood into a mobile rearing pen to protect the chicks from hawks and mongooses.   

We continue to be improve our diverse mixed breed by rearing up a hundred or so chicks every year, and then selecting the largest roosters, and changing the older roosters for the younger males, selling off the older roosters to the neighbors during the New Year holiday when relatives come calling.  The hens lay for 3-4 years, and are retired only when they begin stop laying well.  Our eggs are distinctively diverse in color, ranging from dark brown, to tan, to white, to cream, and even to light blue and green, and we have seen these eggs for sale manay times in the Sigatoka market this past year, which is a good indicator off project success. 

I will close with a story of Rahul, pictured below with his Happy Chickens.  This is the boy who became the head of the house when he was just 14- caring for his younger sister and unmarried aunt.   His mother died of cancer in 2015, and his father, a bus driver, was shortly afterwards imprisoned for five years, all because a young teenage passenger on his bus jumped from the bus unexpectedly and as killed.  Without going into detail on this injustice, we have been helping Rahul in several ways, including happy chickens.  Two years ago, Rahul successfully raised up several dozen chickens, selling the eggs.  He recently he sold off the older birds to help support the family, and he is now is raising up another lot of chckens as he continues developing his small business.  His father wil be released in January, 2020.  Which will be a big relief, and Rahul will graduate from secondary school in 2021.

Thank you all for making these works of love possible.

We just last week finished up two weeks of training for 22 traines - seven men from Kadavu, seven women from Taveuni, and joined on the second week by eight from a local NGO who work with communities in the provinces of Tailevu and Naitasiri.

The Kadavu trainees arrived after one full day of travel by boat and bus, while the Taveuni women travelled for two whole days to get the the farm- three hours by boat to Vanua Levu, then a six hour bus ride acoss the island, a seven hour ferry ride to Suva, and a three hour bus ride to the farm. 

Two US Peace Corps volunteers, Courtney stationed on Taveuni, and Wade stationed on Kadavu, organized the communties and will be folloing up over the next year to help ensure project success. Much of the cost was covered by grants from the Fiji PC Offiice. 

After five days of Happy Chicken training, we began additional livelihoods traing, which included virgin coconut oil production and soap making. 

We sent with the communities larger four-week old chicks that we had raised up, 130 for Kadavu and 75 for Taveuni.  The goal is to create breeding flocks to increase the project.  We aso sent with the trainees materials for a mobile rearing pen, chicken feed, and cuttings of perrenial plants grown as feed sources for the chickens: Moringa and Costus.  The chickens and associated costs were all covered by donations through GlobalGiving.

The participants left us happy and encouraged and full of hope for the future. We have received word that all of the chicks made it safely to their respective destinations.

An additional 45 of these larger chicks were sent last week to Beqa to the women's group there who were trained earlier in the year.  An additional 75 chicks- now five weeks old, will go up into the interrior of Naitasiri nt week, to the trained communities.  We are very busy!

Thanks so much for touching these communities and helpng make this all possible.

Austin 

The hatchery is again fully operational, with 250-300 chicks hatching every week.  A big obective is to continue improving the local chicken breeds through selective breeding.  With that in mind, all of the breeding roosters were changed in April, as the one-year olds were getting too big (4-5kg), and their long and sharp spurs were beginning to hurt the hens.  All hens are kept as layers for at least three years. The diversity of feather color and egg color is amazing, the eggs range from brown to tan to white, to light blue and dark green.  Eggs- clearly from our chickens- are now appearing for sale in the markets. Productive and happy chickens are making a real impact on the communities and farmers.   

Farmers from all over the area want the chicks, which are now clearly recognized as being much better than anything that is available imported from overseaas, or locally hatched.  The people come on foot, by car, even on horesback, to purchase the chicks, sold at $2. Fijian = $1 USD each, which is helping make the project more self-sustaining.  About 20% of the chicks contiune to be donated free of charge to workshop participants and to the poorest farmers- widows, disabled people, the elderly, etc. Materials for pens and feed are also donated to workshop graduates, selected from the poorest communities and those impacted by the recent hurricanes and floods.  We have also sent seven small incubators out to the comunities and we there is a need for purchasing more. 

The last week-long workshop, with 18 participaants was in late June.  We have since raised up close to 100 chicks to the eight-week stage, and they are now ready for sendng to the interrior vllage of Wairuarua, Naitasiri.  Additional chicks are being raised for the trainees from Beqa Island, and fertile eggs are being sent to Koro Island to support the small hatchery we helped establish there.

The big news is that with our increased prosperity from farm sales, we have been able to provide a stipend for a full-time hatchery manager, Mrs. Nicole Raivoka, 23 years old and a graduate of Environmetal Studies at the University of the South Pacific.  Nicole is gaining work experence, and she loves the chickens. We are so thankful for the much needed help. 

More news!  We have secured funding for installing solar power to the hatchery!  This will be a BIG help as the power goes out so often at the farm, and for days on-end, during floods and after cyclones.  We need to get this done and dusted by November when the cyclone season begins.... for now we are in a drought and eperiencing very cool weather down to 13C (57F) at night.  But it is good for the chickens, as they are thriving and  producing over ten dozen eggs a day, about 2/3 of which go to the hatchery.  Any eggs that are too small, too big (double yolked), deformed, cracked, or dirty are used for food.     

Thanks so much to our donors for your generous support, which makes this all possible.   

The hot southern hemisphere summer is now over and the nights are at last getting cooler here in Fiji at the Happy Chicken Hatchery and farm.  This is important as the weather makes a big difference to the fertility and abundance of eggs,and so to the hatching of the chicks. Of course that affects our interactions with the community.  

The hatchery was closed down for the off-season in early April, as many of the hens were taking their annual "vacation", no longer layng and going into "molt"- where the old feathers are replaced by new ones and the hens build up fat reserves so that they can begn another season of productive laying, about two months later. Their hoildays are filled with foraging and scratching for bugs and worms around the farm- a happy existence, and such a contrast to the life that caged hens experience.   

Just as we were considering closing the hatchery in late March due to a shortage of fertile eggs, a hurricane passed by, and we had major flooding in the surrounding community- we are fortunately situated on a high hill.  We lost power for two days and with that, we lost 300 eggs/ developing chicks, which were incubating, impossible to keep the generator going for that long.  Then in mid April, another hurricane passed by even closer, and we lost power for six days, so we were thankful that the hatchery was at that point closed. These last two major power outages have inspired me to put in a proposal to try to get the funds to install solar power to the hatchery... we shall see if it succeeds.

We hatched out 104 chicks this week, the first of the new season, and another hundred or so expected net week.  During peak season in July-October, we get about 300 chicks hatching per week, with workshops and training sessions being conducted and with chicks distributed far and wide around the country to farmers and communities. A very active time, and frankly we were rather exhausted and have enjoyed the off season.

We have planned six community Happy Chicken workshops for the coming months, focusng mainly on women's groups and facilitated by Peace Corps volunteers.  Another donor has agreed to pay for the workshops, so that your donations through GlobalGiving will pay for chicks, starter feed, mobile rearing pens, transport costs for the materials, and a bit of follow up support.  No one is being paid for this work- it is all service, and from the heart, and so your donations go directly to supporting the trainees and their chickens.     

I leave you with some photos of our truly happy chickens... whose very existence is dependent on you.  So far the flocks have produced over 25 thousand baby chicks for the communities, giving hope to the poor and helping improve the lives of many people. 

Vinaka vakalevu (thank you very much).

Xave, a seven year old boy from New Zealand who visited the farm with his parents last August, was so taken by the chickens that he decided to help raise funds for the project when he returned home.  He drew pictures of the chickens and of birds and his father had the drawings lazer cut into wood.  With the help of his mother and a kind-hearted shop keeper, the ornaments were marketed. 

Each ornament has this story printed on an attractive card-

''Hi I'm Xav,  I'm 7 years old and I love animals.  I have drawn and made these decorations for the Happy Chicken Project in Fiji.  I stayed at the Happy Chicken Project permaculture farm in August.  I learnt that they help the communities in the Fiji Islands to sustain an alternative food source while the reefs are closed to repopulate the fish. Villagers are sponsored to come to the farm near Sigatoka, where they learn to forage and grow the feed for the chickens. Then to raise, care and select the hatchlings for breeding, laying or eating. Thank You'' 

The lazer cut-outs sold well, and we were so very touched to receive some of the ornaments in the mail, as well as a sizable donation from Xave's family through GlobalGiving. 

Yet another example of volunteerism by children came after Christmas, when two boys from Vanuatu arrived for three weeks as volunteers. They worked hard feeding our eight flocks of breeding chickens and tending to the hatchery, and baby chicks.  The boys were a true blessing to the farm. As a thank you for their service, we sent a small portable incubator back with them, as they plan to set up a small hatchery to support the project.  Based on discussions with Fiji and Vaanuatu Biosecurity scientists, and once we make a few suggested upgrades to the hatchery, we expect to have permission to send fertile eggs and day-old chicks to Vanuatu by April.  In the mean time the boys will try to access fertile eggs from local farmers to start a breeding flock of local chickens of their own, which can then be used for selection purposes for cross-breeding as the project grows.     

These efforts by the younger generation, together with the loving support of their parents is very encouraging.   

Thanks again so much to all of our supporters, and blessings to you all.