Edgar Vhera — Stakeholders at the just ended 114th edition of the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show (ZAS) have called on researchers to dig deeper and incorporate desirable features on free-range poultry as more beneficiaries benefit Presidential Poultry Scheme.
Government introduced the Presidential Poultry Scheme as one of the eight facets under the Rural Development 8.0 model.
It targets to boost nutrition and incomes for at least three million rural households drawn from across the country.
The Presidential Poultry Scheme launched on August 25, 2022 in Masvingo has since spread its wings to all the country's 10 provinces in line with the Government's mantra of "leaving no one and no place behind.
Zimbabwe Free Range Poultry Association (ZFRPA) secretary Mrs Beauty Jiji said local researchers must up their game and improve the current crop of indigenous birds to integrate other desirable features in order to improve profitability.
In a promotion running under the theme "Free range poultry a conduit for prosperity: Preserving and promoting indigenous gene pool for commercially viable enterprises," Mrs Jiji challenge researcher to incorporate better exotic features without while maintaining better gene pool.
"Our indigenous breeds like bhibho and naked neck (musvuu) have good qualities like strong maternal instinct, disease resistance, survive harsh conditions, very good layer and brooder, dual purpose (meat and eggs) and heat resistance.
"We need to include other desirable features from exotic breeds to improve profitability of the industry," she said.
Other exotic breeds like Potchefstroom Koekoek from South Africa, Orpington breeds from United Kingdom and black Australorp from Australia have other desirable features like high number of eggs per year, best layer, very heat resistant and excellent brooding among others.
Mrs Jiji underscored the need to maintain desirable features of our local breeds that have been endeared by consumers who frequent eating places looking for these indigenous bird meat.
She said ZFRPA has innovated a hay box chick brooding technology as a key milestone to increased household level free range poultry production leading to increased egg productivity, high chick survival rate and overall increased production.
The technology uses simple, local available materials and skills, does not require artificial heating, works by conserving the metabolic heat produced by chicks and reduces losses to predators.
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The ZFRPA is set to distribute a further 880 000 birds to all the country's ten provinces between now and December 31 bringing the cumulative total to 2 500 000, beneficiating 250 000 households since inception.
"These figures could have been higher were it not for distribution and logistics challenges emanating from our incapacitation to pay transporters, packagers and most service providers on time due to delayed settlement of accounts that is now running into months," she lamented.
Mrs Jiji said the industry was pregnant with opportunities which they can exploit to quickly realise their mission.
"The setting up of provincial production units will solve the logistics and distribution issue as it decentralises chick distribution equally to all the country's province unlike now.
"Meat and fertilised eggs aggregation for market and hatching at ward levels has power to ease logistic challenges," said Mrs Jiji.
Under the scheme, households got 10 free-range chicks each in batches over a five-year period and over 2 000 people have been employed by the ZFRPA member organisations.
