From the Field

Contact: Richard Fritz | WPF Managing Director

The combined efforts seek to improve the quality and viability of day-old chicks, enhance management practices to improve incomes, and provide farmers with healthy and productive birds.Stone Mountain, Georgia. — On July 10, 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FOA) announced progress in its partnership with the World Poultry Foundation (WPF) focused on improving biosecurity practices of poultry farms and hatcheries located in Viet Nam.

The two organizations, working closely with the Viet Nam Department of Livestock Production (DLP) recently conducted a workshop in the Hung Yen province. The goal of this workshop was to share best practices for hatchery and parent-flock production practices, promote biosecurity measures to protect operations from diseases such as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and to document the management of farms, improvements made to infrastructure, and promote best practices to growers as they are currently applied in pilot models.

Mr. Vu Van Anh, a workshop attendee who has implemented these and other similar programs from the FAO and WPF reported an increase in egg production by 7%, an increase in hatchability by 3.2%, and an increase in overall profits (by 73,950,000 VND or $3,205 USD) for May and June of 2018, the two months following the implementation of the workshop guidelines.

Van Anh keeps 1,350 laying ducks and has a hatchery with a capacity of 24,000 eggs.

“Thanks to fresh, clean and cool water supplied by a newly made drinking water supply system, clean uncontaminated feed supplied by new-made feeders, and cleaner and better ventilated, cooler housing,” Van Anh shares, “I’ve seen an increase in egg production, hatchability and profits for my operation.”

Post-workshop involvement is important in the continued success of these growers. As such the Da Nang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) will carry out an assessment of the farms that implemented these management and biosecurity practices for hatcheries and parent flock farms, and continue evaluating the new standards, with the long-term goal being implementation to all other poultry farms in the province.

Additionally, training materials on good management practices and biosecurity standards for hatchery and parent flock farms are being added to the DARD’s training program, which is distributed in manuals to growers in the province. The DARD is also seeking to develop a technical and economical standard relating to this model and compile these lessons and project results with all related stakeholders in the region.

About the World Poultry Foundation

The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 whose mission is to help solve hunger and poverty issues and promote economic development in distressed areas and emerging markets outside the United States through the production and consumption of poultry by empowering farmers in developing regions.