Grassroots Linkages Chicken and Pig Dispersal Bohol 2003 – 2004 Coordinator:  Gary King

Objective : Improve Nutrition and Help Livelihood of Rural Women by dispersing young chickens and pigs, training them in animal husbandry, and helping them maintain a growing stable of animals.

Method: With help of NGO money, disperse young animals. One third of each subsequent litter is returned to the program for three years, so it can help others. Same split if a sow is sold.

Seed Money from PSGMF: $ 500

Progress: Ten piglets and 20 chickens dispersed. The chickens, imported breeds, mostly died when there were heavy rains. Now crossbreeding with hardier local breeds.

Monitoring: Gary King visited in January 25, 2004. Gary visited two farms. In one, the pig had good growth because that family gave it corn and some store- bought feeds in addition to table scraps. In the other, the pig was growing very slowly on only table scraps.

Final Report due: May 31, 2004

Another batch of pigs is ready for dispersal at the BoCap center in Guindulman.	On the right, the manager of the dispersal project.
Chickens and young, some ready for dispersal.	Some chickens are of an imported variety, for larger, faster growth.
Above, an agriculturalist, and expert on medicinal plants.	The dispersal project gets into the farms of the rural areas.
This pig is doing well.	The family (Dad on left) grows corn, and can provide it with scraps et al.
.	Please see the final analysis of the project below.
This recipient of a pig has not seen it thrive.  She can only afford to feed it table scraps.  It might not grow enough to have offspring.

 

Final analysis: The final report came 15 months after project initiated, so it was timely and most thorough. Hog disperals. Used pigs that grow fast, for meat production. These require a lot of food, and food costs increased 33% in the one year. Without enough food, they grow slowly and will not reproduce. Cholera and another illness killed 3 of ten piglets. The equivalent of 11 pigs were returned to the project - recipients were supposed to return 1/3 of the litters - but this does not cover transportation and training costs and medicines. Chicken disperals. They tried 30 nonnative chickens, noted for their large size. Rainy season killed most of them, and others did not sit on the nests to hatch eggs. About 1/3 recipients did well, and have an ongoing production of pigs. Others had the pigs die, or not thrive, and they were sold for meat once it was realized they were too expensive for the weight they gained. If they can reflect on the program and propose an extension that might be self-sustaining, PSGMF might give them another grant.