Village chicken manual kicks MDGs

Newcastle disease community chicken vaccination day, Malawi

Smallholder poultry producers in developing countries are set to benefit from two ACIAR publications aiming to boost chicken production and reduce disease incidence.

Village chicken improvement programs have the potential to contribute to each of the Millennium Development Goals by increasing household incomes, improving family nutrition and empowering women – alleviating poverty for the most vulnerable families in developing countries.

Improving village chicken production: a manual for field workers and trainers is a practical toolkit describing husbandry practices and biosecurity measures for village chickens that can be readily implemented using locally available resources.

This is the fourth manual on improvements to village chicken production supported by ACIAR. The manuals aim to fill gaps in the training literature, which has dealt mostly with intensive commercial production or backyard production in developed countries.

The manual for field workers and trainers draws on the research results of a number of ACIAR-funded projects on the control of Newcastle disease in village chickens using vaccines more tolerant to temperature variations than regular vaccines that require cold transport and storage.

Newcastle disease remains a major constraint to poultry production worldwide, killing more birds than avian influenza.

A second publication, Village chickens, poverty alleviation and the sustainable control of Newcastle disease, complements the manual and draws together papers from an international conference held in Tanzania that included over 100 village poultry researchers and animal health specialists from Africa, South-East Asia, Europe and the Pacific.

ACIAR continues to support University of Queensland to provide developing countries with ‘master seed’ for the thermotolerant I-2 vaccine for Newcastle disease.

ACIAR and AusAID’s Newcastle disease control program is expected to have lasting, positive impacts on the livelihoods of many poor rural women and children in developing countries.

Case study: Sra Luisa Arnaldo, Mozambique.