Harare — A SMALL disabled baby crocodile the size of an adult lizard  crawls into a pond of water, its sluggish body struggling to keep up with the fast pace of other able-bodied reptiles.

The baby crocodile, now three-months-old, was born with multiple disabilities on its spine caused by improper handling of its egg when it was taken from the Runde River sandbank in Chiredzi.

Its head is attached to its left leg and its spine is horribly twisted but it has the right to live like any other crocodile.

Its sex has not yet been determined and is among a bask of 318 baby crocodiles being bred at a farm named after the country's first female Vice President Cde Joice Mujuru.

After years of observing that sand has declared a sharp contest with water and continues to choke the Runde River, gagging the crocodile population, villagers came together to find a conservation solution.

Agricultural extension officer Mr Tawanda Baramasimbe, who works with the group, said the crocodile project was born following a series of meetings by villagers under Chief Chilonga's area.

"We took into consideration that Zimbabwe is an agro-based economy whose majority population stays in rural areas and earns a living largely from subsistence farming.

"We also realised that rain patterns have changed and the fact that most of the smallholder farmers here are heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture. We had challenges in expanding irrigation development and saw it fit to turn to crocodile farming," he said.

The farm's incubator and hatchery ensure that a high percentage of the eggs collected yield a fine crop of hatchlings.

Mr Baramasimbe said they expected to rear the hatchlings commercially once they have attained a slaughter size of approximately 1,5 metres in length.

"The crocodiles will be slaughtered with the skins and meat being the two primary export commodities.

"We are lucky that the white farmer who used to stay at this farm was also into crocodile farming hence the facilities that include ponds, incubators and boilers were easily available.

"We hope that the project will bring income, development and attract tourists in the long run and will not worry if we fail to harvest much from our crops that are in a bad state."

The co-operative is under the watchful eye of 28 villagers and A1 farmers who tirelessly work to ensure that everything goes well.

Mr Baramasimbe said the crocodile project was likely to become a means of livelihood for the villagers and raise the community's hopes of contributing towards achieving Millennium Development Goal Number One.

The MDG seeks to halve the proportion of people whose income is less than the Total Consumption Poverty Line by 2015.

The Goal also tries to halve by 2015, the proportion of people in human poverty, as measured by the Human Poverty Index (HPI) and the villagers are confident of achieving it come the deadline.

"Since independence, Zimbabwe has registered commendable progress in environmental management in areas that include afforestation programmes, land reclamation and natural resource conservation programmes, helping to transform previously degraded parts of the country into natural resource reservoirs.

"We want our reservoir to grow and be counted among the most successful crocodile farms in the country," he added.

Mr Baramasimbe said they collected crocodile eggs from Runde River banks, which is a breeding ground for the crocodiles.

The climate on the farm, which neighbours the wide Runde River, is perfect for crocodile breeding with mild winters and hot summers.

"We now know their breeding patterns, the manner in which they hide their eggs and how to get them without being attacked. After collecting the eggs from the wild we bring them to the farms where we incubate and hatch them. The hatchlings are raised in captivity and later put in ponds," he said.

There are six ponds housing the baby crocodiles and they are grouped according to their ages and growth patterns.

Co-operative members take turns to feed the crocodiles with goat meat and fish.

"For now, feeding them is not a problem as their appetite is still small. We ask each co-operative member to pay money to buy goats from other villagers. Goats here cost between US$15 and US$30 and this means that if each member pays US$1 every week we can afford to buy the goat.

"We will increase the fees as the crocodiles grow so that we keep up with their hunger," he added.

Another co-operative member, Mr Richard Magezani said they were planning to breed their own goats so that the crocodiles have a ready meal.

He said goat breeding would help them save money.

But he fears that limited food resources on the farm may result in them selling the crocodiles while they were still small.

They are also looking forward to forging partnerships with other crocodile farmers who would help with slaughtering and get lucrative export markets.

He said they hoped to find safer means of transporting the eggs from the river to the incubators to avoid shaking them.

"We are currently using a tractor to transport the fragile eggs but the ride from Runde River to the farm is sometimes bumpy.

"Shaking the eggs during transportation disturbs embryo development resulting in different forms of disability on the crocodiles.

"All three disabled crocodiles here are victims of such accidents. We will not kill the disabled baby crocodiles, but will let fate choose their destiny," said another cooperative member Mrs Tendai Jemu.

With the country's earnings from the crocodile farming industry growing significantly from US$300 000 in 1980 to US$2,6 million in 1989 (Miur 1994), such projects at smallholder levels may positively impact on the lives of many rural folk.

In 1991, over 58 000 eggs were collected from the wild, mostly from Lake Kariba and the industry earned US$2 million in hide sales (Makombe 1993).

In Zimbabwe, farmers are required to return the proportion of hatched crocodiles to the wild. This led to significant increases in the wild population

Unregulated hunting of crocodiles mainly for skin and meat led to major decline in the populations of all three species on the African continent and the introduction of trade controls under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Within Africa, crocodiles were first bred in Zimbabwe but have now spread to many parts of the continent particularly Southern and Eastern African Countries.

Crocodile farming does not only generate income for households and food security, but also has direct conservation benefits.