In July, I had the privilege of traveling to Nigeria with Mike Welch, the World Poultry Foundation’s Vice Chairman. Together, we visited Nigeria to meet with our partner in the African Poultry Multiplication Initiative project.
We are pleased with the progress and the impact of the project is now being seen in the rural villages. Many smallholder farmers are reporting to us the advantages of the dual-purpose bird and are very excited at the performance. Many are selling the males into the market in ½ the time it takes for them to reach market weight with the local village chickens.
We talked with several farmers who were selling eggs, but many are using the eggs to feed to their children, which is so encouraging to us as improving nutrition at the village level is one of our main objectives with the project.
When we say that we travel roads that are “rural” and literally will shake your teeth out, people don’t really get the concept. On this trip, we were way out in the bush headed to a remote village when we encountered a bridge that we had to cross. The bridge was composed of felled trees that were laid across a ditch and one of these had broken sometime prior to us. We had to literally guide the drivers across the logs with about an inch of each tire hanging off the edge. If one of the vehicles had fallen through, I have no clue what we would have done.
That’s a “story from the road” that will stick with me a while!
Randall Ennis
CEO
World Poultry Foundation
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