Good management practices pave the way for improved livelihoods

Indubai Bodke is a resident of Tikonapeth of Mulshi Block of Pune district. She suffered a dual tragedy of the loss of her husband and home due to displacement caused by the Pawana dam. Indubai was left with a small piece of un-irrigated land which was her only source of income. This land had to be cultivated by employing labourers on daily wages. Since she was financially unable to pay the labour, she had to depend upon her relatives and neighbours to borrow money. Although she reared a few poultry birds, regular morbidity in the birds, followed by mortality in case of infectious diseases, kept her from harnessing any economic benefits. It became difficult for her to make a living with two small children.

In 1994, when Anthra started working in the Mulshi Block it focussed on collecting data related to the mortality and morbidity amongst backyard poultry birds in the village. Surveys brought out that diseases like white diarrhoea and Newcastle disease were among the most prevalent diseases.

Indu bai was one of the Anthra’s first trainees. She attended a day’s training on poultry rearing imparted by Anthra. She carefully followed and applied the lessons taught to her during the training and began providing clean water to her chickens. She also added potassium permanganate or Turmeric to the water for the poultry which helped in reducing incidence of Salmonellosis - the root cause of White diarrhoea in poultry birds. She also got her chickens vaccinated against the highly infectious Newcastle disease.

Soon Indubai’s problem of regular morbidity in her poultry flock was resolved. Presently she rears 15-20 chicken in her backyard and offers a chicken meal to the labourers on her land in lieu of wages. Additionally the birds are also consumed at Indubai’s household. She can easily manage a bigger flock of birds following the simple to follow good management practices.

Contributed by - Anthra,  Hyderabad (2009)