Preparing feed for local chickens in agroecological ways

Hello, listener, and welcome to today’s program. While the genetic make-up of local chickens is one factor that influences the quality of their meat and eggs, another factor is the type of feed they eat. This is one of the factors that differentiates local chickens from other breeds of chickens, including improved chickens.

Whether local chicken meat is used in a sauce, or grilled or baked, it does not need too many preservatives or flavourings to taste good. It is so popular that people sometimes travel some distance to get their favourite meat or eggs. This is true for many people who live in areas that are dominated by improved chickens.

Many people know that local chickens eat locally available feeds they find in the environment around them, and that this results in high quality meat and eggs. Today, we will look at how farmers can prepare feed for local chickens.

In this program, we will interview five people. Anna Msenduki is an expert from the agriculture office in Mpwapwa district, Dodoma region. We also have three farmers from Hogoro village in Kongwa district: Petro, Silvester Gidion, and Juktani Simon. We will also speak with Veronika Masaka, a farmer from the Dodoma Region in central Tanzania.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are very welcome.

Veronica Masaka is a local chicken keeper who will talk about how she has been feeding her local chickens.

I have been a successful chicken keeper for ten years now as part of my farming business.

What do you feed your local chickens?

My chickens spend 10 hours outside the shed, and all that time they are looking for feed.

I always make sure that there is enough water outside the shed. That way, when they need water, they can easily get it instead of going for a long time without drinking, or drinking dirty and/or contaminated water that can cause diseases.

When they come out of the chicken shed at six a.m. on Monday, I give them a small meal of food scraps in their feed bowl.

Then I let them go to find other sources of nutrients on their own outside because there are plenty of sources of feed for them in the surrounding area until they return to the shed in the evening.

What other feed do you give to your local chickens?

I look for leafy greens and vegetables like spinach and cabbage, but I also regularly pick other leaves, for example, weeds, and mix or place them around the area where chickens rest to reduce the cost of feeding. The chickens get extra vitamins and minerals such as calcium from the vegetable leaves and from around the homestead.

What kind of feed do you give them aside from food scraps and leafy vegetables?

I give them fruits and the remains of fruit that I collect from neighbours in the morning. I take them to my chickens in the morning before they go out to look for other feed.

The fruits give various nutrients such as vitamin C that protect them from diseases.

They can be guavas, bananas, or various other fruits. The chickens always like fruits and they always finish them completely.

What feed do you give chickens when they are outside?

When the chickens go outside, they find feed for themselves—like small insects, leaves, and the seeds of fruit trees.

How much do you spend to buy chicken feed for your chickens?

I don’t spend any money, because I use food scraps and they go out to find their own feed. I have been selling local chicken meat in the market because it is delicious, and I have also been using local chickens as a source of food at home. So I have benefited a lot.

What do you do if you don’t have food scraps to give them in the morning before letting them outside?

When I don’t have food scraps, I take them out early and let them find their own feed.

Dear listener, today in our program we are learning about feed for local chickens. Now we are with Silvester Gidion, a farmer from Hogoro Kongwa District, in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. He will tell us what kind of feeds he gives to his local chickens.

Thanks a lot. In our village, we feed local chickens with sorghum and maize or kitchen remains.

How do you feed local chickens when you keep them indoors?

At the beginning, I started with sixty chickens, and I prepared five kilograms of maize bran mixed with other supplements. Later, I added five kilos of sorghum and three or four litres of water for drinking. This is the amount of feed the sixty chickens eat in one day.

What is your daily schedule caring for local chickens?

We wake up in the morning at 6:00 am and clean the shelter and prepare maize for them until noon. At 10 a.m., we put water in the calabash because our local chickens do not go out at this time.

The feed we provide is based on the nutritional shortcomings of the feed that they gather by themselves, and includes sorghum and maize.

In the evening, we provide them with water for drinking and we clean their housing for a second time to ensure that they can sleep in a clean and safe place.

We do this to protect especially the young chicks from getting diseases from a dirty shed, and to protect them from eating dirt because that also can cause diseases.

We always separate big chickens and small chickens so we can provide them with different feeds. Often, we feed small chickens and big chickens differently, especially in built housing.

What benefits have you enjoyed by keeping local chickens?

I managed to build the family house through selling chickens and eggs.

Now we will speak with Juktani Miagi, who also keeps local chickens. He will tell us how he manages local chickens when they get diseases.

At first, we received no advice from extension officers on how to treat local chickens. We used a traditional herbal medicine that we mixed with water and added to the chickens’ drinking water. Or we used cassava leaves. But when the diseases got worse and worse, we started looking for specialists for further treatment.

At what stage in treating a disease do you call in a specialist?

If we fail to treat the disease, we call officers to provide further treatment—or vaccinations for the healthy chickens.

What happens after an officer comes and treats or vaccinates your chickens?

When the chickens are treated correctly or vaccinated, the disease disappears and the chickens live normally without any problems. The veterinary officers teach us that we should regularly vaccinate our chickens before a disease strikes them.

At what age should a chicken be vaccinated? Did the veterinary officer give them a particular kind of vaccine?

They received vaccines for Newcastle disease, fowl pox, and influenza, because these are the diseases are common and bother the chickens most. We were taught to vaccinate the chickens when they are 3–7 days old. The chickens are especially susceptible to disease at this age, and the cold winter months in our region are when they suffer the most.

Jesca Peter also keeps local chickens. She tells us how she and her husband produce feed for local chickens and how local chickens get infected with diseases.

Every morning, we feed chickens with maize that has been threshed in a mill, and we also feed them sorghum. We feed them twice a day—in the morning and in the evening.

Why do you use maize and sorghum? Do the chickens respond well to these feeds, or are there problems?

The chicks cannot eat whole grains, but for the older birds, there is no problem at all.

How do you work with agricultural livestock officers?

Extension officers visit us on a schedule, or when we need them after discovering a problem. We reach them via cell phone, and they come to check the problems and provide feedback on how to stop things from getting worse.

How should farmers make housing that will keep local chickens well-fed and healthy?

There are two types of housing: free sheds and apartment sheds. The free sheds are 15 metres long and five metres wide, big enough so that 100 chickens can live well. We use wire mesh, bricks, tin, and wood to build the free shed.

The apartment sheds or cages are from half a metre to a metre and a half high and five metres wide, and have two rooms. They have special feeding equipment that prevents feed from being spilled, as well as watering equipment.

We clean the sheds every morning.

How do you protect local chickens against diseases?

We use vaccination, and we isolate ill birds from the flock to prevent spreading the disease.

Also, we separate small chicks from the area where the older chickens are kept.

What feeds do you give to little chicks?

For the chicks, we grind maize and then sift it to get small feed that the chicks can swallow.

We will now speak with a livestock officer from Mpwapwa District in Dodoma Region, who will tell us about recommended feed for local chickens.

My name is Anna Anthony, and I’m a veterinarian responsible for providing education and advice on rearing indigenous or local poultry and other animals.

The diets of local chickens are not very different from that of modern hybrid chickens. Usually, local chickens are raised freely, while hybrids are kept half in housing and half outside and are raised together with local chickens.

In terms of feed, the two types of chickens do not differ much. The goal is to keep them commercially, so we want them to grow fast and get the right nutrients. For example, the chicken feed would include sorghum, millet, lime, premixed minerals, seed cakes, and salt. This helps the chickens get the right nutrients and minerals to build their bodies. Also, the chickens get a variety of insects because they are kept half outside and half inside in a semi-intensive system, and this adds important nutrients to their diet.

How much should local chickens eat in one day?

If the chickens are big, they should eat up to 120 grams a day, including the feed that they find for themselves.

Here is how to make 100 kilos of feed for a local chicken that is from 8-10 months old: You mix together the following seven ingredients: First, 40 kg of maize or sorghum; second, 27 kilos of sorghum, maize, or wheat bran; third, 20 kilos of sesame seed cake, cotton seed cake, or groundnuts; fourth, 2.25 kilos of chicken bone meal or lime; fifth, 10 kilos of seafood or leftover fish such as perch fish meal; sixth, half a kilo of kitchen salt; and finally, one-quarter kilo of high-nutrient premix. This mixture is for chickens from 8-10 months old.

What about for other small chickens?

Here is the feed formulation for three or four-month-old local chickens. There are also seven ingredients in this mix.

First, you add 25 kilos of maize bran or sorghum; second, you add 44 kilos or sorghum or maize; third, you add 17 kilos of sunflower seed cake, sesame seed cake, cotton seed cake, or groundnut cake; fourth, you add 3.25 kilos of bone meal or lime; fifth, you add 10 kilos of seafood or fish meal; sixth, you add one-quarter kilo of kitchen salt; and finally you add one-half kilo of nutrients. This also makes 100 kilos.

What about for five to six-month-old local chickens?

For five to six-month-old local chickens, you give them the following mixture until they are sold. It contains six ingredients.

First, you add 31 kilos of maize bran or sorghum; second, you add 38 kilos of sunflower seed cake, sesame seed cake, cottonseed cake, or groundnut cake; third, you add 2.25 kilos of bone meal or lime; fourth, you add 13 kilos of seafood or fish meal; fifth, you add half a kilo of kitchen salt; and sixth, you add a quarter kilo of nutrients. This adds up to 100 kilos.

It’s important to note that this last mixture is for commercial local chickens only, and it makes the chicken oily.

But if you want your local chickens to grow fast on this mixture, start giving it to them at the end of the third month. After that you should give them the following mixture of 10 ingredients to prepare them for laying.

First, two kilos of seafood; second, two kilos of blood meal; third, eight kilos of sunflower seed cake; fourth, five kilos of maize bran; fifth, 24 kilos of maize; sixth, five kilos of lime; seven, four kilos of bone meal; eighth, 150 grams of layers’ premix; ninth, 50 grams of methionine; and last, 30 grams of salt.

Which chickens are the best ones to market right now—improved chickens or local chickens?

Local chickens are the best. The local chicken market has the highest sales because of the high quality of its meat and eggs.

We have reached the end of our program. Thank you very much for listening to this episode, and I hope you have learned a lot about how to feed and manage local chickens.

In this episode, we have seen that farmers can use food scraps to feed local chickens before they let them out of the shed to feed themselves.

Also, we have seen that local chickens can be fed the remains of fruits or fresh fruits.

Also, local chickens can spend most of their time outside the chicken shed and that feeds can be prepared while they are inside the chicken shed, including leaves.

Finally, farmers who raise and keep local chickens should be in close contact with livestock officers to let them know when their chickens have any disease problems or for technical advice.