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Cluck Cluck

"The key to everything is patience.  You get the chicken by hatching the egg-not smashing it."
-Arnold Glasgow

The first batch of chicken will be ready for slaughter in two weeks!  Let's just say this project has been a lesson in sociology as well as agriculture. We have families that have only lost 1 chick and families that have lost 8.  Of the six families participating only 1 wants to stop (the one that lost 8 chicks).  David, our intern, has been meeting with the families regularly to trouble shoot, give advice and give feed and medicine.  We will be using various methods to market our "pollo":  by word of mouth, by radio, by internet and through a restaurant.  We're pretty confident we'll be able to sell all the chicken and get increase our next batch to 30 chicken (or more) per family. The families will then pay us back the food out of their earnings and will have money left over!  We'll let you know how we did in a few weeks.

We already have 2 new families that are ready to jump in and join the fun in February!  We're considering marketing our project under the name "Delicious Chicken" or in Guarani "Ry guazu Je."  As the project continues to grow, we will need to centralize our production, but for right now we're happy to be teaching our friends how they can succeed in a self-sustaining project. Stay tuned for "What We've Learned from our Chicken" coming soon.
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  1. Jen PriceJanuary 16, 2010 at 8:39 AM

    That's awesome! My brother-in-law did something similar in Zambia, only not with chickens but they had a seed bank to help people get started. It was really successful!

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