Chicken Project 2007

During August 2006, a group of Hope and Aid Direct volunteers met socially in Cardiff. Maggie and Coxy came up with the idea of chicken farming on a small scale in a suitable location in Kosovo. The purpose was to enable people to help themselves.

A collective centre in Ferizaj was chosen as the location for the first chicken farm. There are around sixty people of multi-ethnic origin living in this centre which is situated near a railway line. Three families agreed to share the running of the project.

Coxy works with offenders doing community service so they agreed that providing there was no cost to them, they would build the chicken coups from a pattern and put them, flat packed, on the truck ready for the Easter convoy.

On arrival at Ferizaj work began, digging the holes so that the posts can be concreted in but time is limited, the trucks and crews have to leave for the UK. So on June 18th its back to Kosovo for Maggie, Coxy and Graham.  When they buy the rest of the material required and get stuck in with lots of help from others from the centre.

We purchased 50 birds and were advised we would be waiting up to a month for them to settle in before they started laying, but within half an hour .. Bingo!

A local TV crew appear and with Graham acting as our spokesman, all are thoroughly impressed with what we had achieved and the potential of the project.

Maggie demonstrates to members from the centre, how to make a tasty Spanish omelette and other simple egg dishes. The families are also told that they are expected to run this as a small business, although we will supply the chicken feed for the first year. Eventually they will sell the eggs at a reduced cost to the other families or to a local shop.

We were very impressed with Agron and his family. He was not one of the three families chosen to run the project but in exchange for all his help (an ex-builder) we gave him the surplus wire. When we returned he had built his own chicken run next to the big one and included a wicker beehive.

Everyone is happy and the project is running smoothly as of end July 2007 but we will get a better picture when we see them during the winter convoy of aid to Kosovo. As this is the first project of its type that Hope and Aid Direct has undertaken, we are all still learning.