By Kim Bowden-Kerby | Permaculture farm hostess of livelihoods workshops
Notes from Austin: known locally as both "The Chicken Man" or "The Coral Man" depending on where in Fiji you're talking with folks.
I also graduated the remaining chickens from the mobile rearing pen to a house, That gave space to move 5 broody hens off the nests and put them into jail to cure them. I found two hens sitting on clutches of eggs in the bushes, but decided to leave them.
Just yesterday Parvinesh, the backhoe owner who digs out our drains (roadside ditches) was telling me that the small incubator we gave his wife a year and a half ago continues to hatch out chicks every three weeks or so. She sells them for $50 a dozen and it is a good business for her. The big rooster she got from me three years ago is getting too old, so Parvinesh took two young breeder roosters as replacements. Our son Akka handles all the chicken sales. There are so many customers that the wait time for chicks is usually 4-6 months. Akka keeps the orders in a notebook with consecutive numbers - and he records the customer's phone number with his number in the line (like Ravi 237, Jone 258, Sara 401). As the phone rings, he knows it is a customer - and with a quick glance at the last customer served, he can immediately tell the caller how much longer the wait for chicks is going to be. Efficient.
The chickens sent out to the reef conserving communities are free.
Austin said to tell you that he buried a dead hen under this tree, and now it is blooming poultry with over 10 chickens enjoying the mottled shade of the branches.
The light quality wasn’t great when Austin took the photo for proof, so I put yellow circles to show each of the six chickens in the tree.
In more serious chicken business… the team was able to achieve a “grant output” by transporting 47 nearly-grown chickens to the island of Moturiki. There, residents of two villages are involved in the Reefs of Hope coral program, have no-take fishing areas established, and are now getting chickens from the Happy Chicken project as a source of alternative protein.
Junia is getting the chickens out of their mobile rearing pen, into the transport crates. The dogs approve.
Eroni hefts the crates into the truck. In reality, this was a three-man job with Austin also providing muscle power.
A close-up of one crate of chickens going to their “forever home.”
This delivery was a first. Eroni, still a pretty new driver, drove the project truck all the way to Ucunivanua landing (way past Suva) and most of the way home. Junia, still on a learner’s permit, drove the last leg from Navua to the farm. From the landing, they took a boat to Moturiki – usually a 35-minute trip. On the way back, it rained so hard that that they were 20 minutes lost and with no landmarks at all (scary!) – that return took well over an hour. Oh, the adventures of the Happy Chicken Project!
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