Tanzania Fund

March 2010

* The project now encompasses;

31 villages
197 producer groups
6,341 chicken keepers
381,974 vaccinated chickens.

* Vaccinations against Newcastle disease has reduced chicken mortality from 80% to 10%
- Local districts now organising vaccinations against fowl pox

* 100 Plymouth Rock cockerels have been distributed to improve the quality of local chickens
- Training provided now on care for cockerels has significantly reduced mortality

* Extensive training has been completed with local organisations on;
- Construction of chicken sheds
- Chicken feeds and feeding
- Chicken diseases and pests
- Selling centres for farmers
- HIV/Aids
- Savings and Internal Lending Communities
- Marketing: aimed at getting higher prices for chickens

* Help & encouragement to build chicken sheds for local collection & selling;
- 4 completed, 18 being built
- Roofing materials are funded, but local people provide everything else and construct buildings

* Two motorcycles provided for District Contact persons to visit villages

* See full report

September 2009

Vaccinations against Newcastle disease:
* 178,000 chickens innoculated, belonging to 3,500 farmers in Bariadi and Maswa
* Farmers now trained to do their own vaccinations
* Mortality of chickens has fallen from 80% to 10%
* Working now on vaccinations for fowl pox

Distribution of cockerels:
* 100 Plymouth Rock cockerels distributed for cross breeding with local breeds
* High mortality of Plymouth Rock cockerels being addressed by more training for farmers
* Improvement now being seen with healthier, faster growing chicks

Sheds for collection & selling of chickens:
* Sheds being constructed to facilitate sales of chickens
* Local groups build walls, and the project funds the roofs

Full report available here

May 2009 Update:
We've now reached the end of the first year of the local chicken project, which ran from May 2008 to April 2009. During the last four weeks work has largely involved training and follow-up at farmer level to provide technical support as farmers put into practice the new knowledge and skills. This is what has been done;

Training: 21 community resource persons (11 women and 10 men) from 10 villages have been trained on Savings and Internal Lending (SILC) groups. Each person developed an action plan for delivering similar training to other members of their groups. Training for the remaining 20 villages is continuing.

Follow up: Meetings were held in all 30 villages. This involved a veterinarian from the Zonal Veterinary Investigation Centre in Mwanza verifying the efficacy of the vaccine they had supplied. Farmers confirmed that it was working well. During the first round of vaccination, which was done by the farmers themselves, 300–400 chickens per vial were treated at a cost of 20–50 Tanzanian Shillings ( 1-2 pence) per chicken, which is quite an efficient yield. Data collection to monitor numbers of chicken vaccinated, died, sold and consumed is now being developed for subsequent distribution to groups. An additional 250 vials of vaccine have been issued to groups for vaccinating new born chicks. The second round of vaccination is scheduled for later May 2009.

Further development: 33 farmers (12 men and 21 women), 2 district contact persons and 1 staff from TSAEE participated in a learning visit in 2 districts in Mwanza region (Misungwi and Sengerema), where farmers have made progress on improved local chicken rearing. There were 17 farmers from Bariadi (11 women and 6 men) and 16 farmers from Maswa (10 women and 6 men).The visitors learnt about how synchronized hatching is managed by farmers. Each participant then developed an action plan on how they would put in to practice new things they had learnt and how they would share the lessons. This will form the basis for follow-up meetings with these farmers.

April 2009 Update:

Group formation: 32 additional groups have been formed in 7 villages making a total of 43, with 1,188 members, 575 male and 613 female.

Training: 59 farmers have received training on entrepreneurship; 28 from Bariadi, including 9 females, and 31 from Maswa, including 13 females. 58 farmers have received training on collective marketing; 28 from Bariadi and 30 from Maswa, with a mix of males and females.

Organizing and operating effective Savings & Internal Lending (SILC) groups: Out of the initial 118 producer groups formed, 60 have now established SILC involving 1,604 members, half female. There is now increasing interest in SILC's, especially in Bariadi, spreading outside that village. 3 neighbouring villages have also now formed their own new SILC groups.

Training for 20 Community resource persons (CRP's): 2 from each village, a man and a woman, were trained on chicken husbandry and SILC on 17 – 21th March (2 days in each village).

Vaccinations: Following the first round of vaccinations, there has been further demand from farmers for more vaccination. 250 more vaccinations for Newcastle disease have been made. The team is currently in the field conducting training and further vaccinations.

Local Partners The assessment of the 7 short listed local partners found that there is no single partner that works on all the 30 project villages. A decision has been taken to engage TAHEA, which has worked with Oxfam before. They have agreed to operate in Bariadi and Maswa using their members from those districts. We have formed an agreement with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on working in 6 villages under the project (2 in Bariadi and 4 in Maswa). Following a consultative meeting it was established that while we facilitate both value chain development and SILC formation, Catholic Relief Services will only handle the SILC. This will save us some money that we would have used on training for SILC.

March 2009 Update:

o Group formation is ongoing. 118 groups have been formed so far involving 3535 direct
beneficiaries, of whom 1754 (49.6%) are women)
o 4 stockists have been identified for supplying vaccines to farmers’ groups. Training
needs assessment of beneficiaries, inputs stockists and extension staff have been done
o Initial training on basic technical aspects (Disease control, housing, group dynamics,
programmed hatching, have been conducted for 62 group leaders, 30 extension staff
and 2 inputs stockists attended workshop on vaccine supply chain.
o 120 group leaders (38% women) and 1,306 farmers (46% women) from have received
training on basics of poultry hygiene, disease control and management
o The first round of vaccination of chicken for group members and their neighbours has
been completed. 231,000 chickens have been vaccinated
o Training on savings and internal lending societies (SILC) began in 3 villages the training
is ongoing, 11 SILC groups have been formed involving 360 farmers who are already
saving and benefiting from loans from their groups. Some of the loans are directed at
improving their local chicken enterprises, beginning with improving housing for the
chicken.
o 7 local partners have been short-listed, on ground assessment to be done in February