Meet the new LIVEBIRDS member, Hdrdlife Moyana. The photo shows Hardlife playing with his new phone that was given to him for easy comms at the farm.
He is captured attending to some chickens at the farm. Hardlife is hardworking and has brought some new ideas about keeping chickens.He brought a brilliant idea that helped stop the death of many chicks during these cold days that we are experiencing in Zimbabwe.
When Hardlife came in the picture we were losing chickens because of the cold spell in Zimbabwe, in June and July Zimbabwe is usually very cold with ground temperatures below zero in some areas, this results in many chickens dying especially when the chickens are still below 20days of age.
Hardlife brought a brilliant idea, he collected all the 2litre plastic bottles at the farm(we always have many lying around because of the Mazoe drink that we buy always).
Every morning around 3am(when it begins to be really cold)he fills all the 13 containers with hot water , and wraps the containers with a newspaper to retain the heat for a longer period. The bottled,warm water provides warmth to the chickens for about 4hours and we recorded a very significant drop in the death of the chicks since two weeks ago when he started it. When he was questioned he said that he learnt that technique from his grandmother who used to rear 100 chickens for sale every two months.
We managed to buy some bulbs that provide warmth to the chickens but still some chickens were buying, Hardlife’s method proved effective-though it means putting a 25 litre container of water every morning around 2am. Last week Friday we delivered 110chickens to the farm and the 110 are all alive when I checked this morning. The idea is to have 800 or more chickens at the farm at any given time and we are closing the gaps, a statement that we coined recently which means that we have to sell a 100 chickens every week and we are buying a 100 chickens every week to close any gap after a month(ie closing a gap where we would have had a week without slaughtering chickens)
We managed to buy some bulbs that provide warmth to the chickens but still some chickens were buying, Hardlife’s method proved effective-though it means putting a 25 litre container of water every morning around 2am. Last week Friday we delivered 110chickens to the farm and the 110 are all alive when I checked this morning. The idea is to have 800 or more chickens at the farm at any given time and we are closing the gaps, a statement that we coined recently which means that we have to sell a 100 chickens every week and we are buying a 100 chickens every week to close any gap after a month(ie closing a gap where we would have had a week without slaughtering chickens)
May God bless LIVEBIRDS, and our friends in America.
Misheck Kugodah Mlambo
(for LIVEBIRDS,Zimbabwe)
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