Utete, TZ – Wedding gifts help change lives – 31 Dec 2013
Frank stays busy in Kindwitwi managing the finances for the local organic vegetable garden shop. Lately, he has been busy as part of a team with another project and he’s very excited about it.
Last summer Ben and Jesse Bates generously asked their wedding guests to donate money to help families in the Utete area of Tanzania, instead of giving them wedding gifts. That money was packaged into a grant for Frank and his friend Yusa to build a chicken banda not far from Frank’s home. With help from visiting Parmiters School students, the team and a skilled builder completed the building in August and then purchased 107 chicks with a loan. They hoped that the chicks would grow into important income-generating assets.
Bates’ Banda
When the team purchased the chickens they were told that if they worked hard and took good care of them then they could expect an 80% survival rate from purchase until they began producing eggs. They have actually achieved 91% survival rate, so today 98 out of the original 107 chickens are well and starting to produce eggs and generate an income.
Chickens feeding inside the banda.
Good chicken care includes feeding the chickens quality food on a regular basis, ensuring water is available for chickens at all times, having a vet visit regularly for health check-ups, building a strong fence around the living area to protect chickens, and keeping the area clean to prevent diseases.
The chickens are not yet producing eggs at full capacity but already they deliver an average of 30 eggs per day. Eggs can be sold individually for 300 TZS ( US$0.19 ) or sold by the crate of thirty for 8,000 TZS ( US$5.00 ).
A few days of eggs beings collected.
For now, the team is focused on paying off the loan for purchasing the chickens, equipment and initial feed and veterinary care. They want to pay off the loan so that they can reinvest their earnings to grow their income generating asset. The coop has space for 300 chickens and so far demand for eggs has been much higher than the supply. Frank and Yusa want to continue expanding the project so that they can make plans for how to spend the extra income to improve the lives of the team members’ families.
The banda design allows for chickens to range both inside and outside throughout the day.
We are very excited to watch the progress of this project and to track its success.