Monday, May 17, 2010

Students conduct poultry survey, construct fish pond

Students of University of Natural Resources and Environment have gone out to conduct a survey to assist in improving village poultry production in East New Britain.

The students began their survey last week at Vudal Block interviewing villagers on the production of village poultry.

According to Animal Science lecturer Saun Ignatius, the survey would determine number of village chickens kept by household, where they kept chickens (chicken house) and their production performance from clustered sample of villages in Papua New Guinea.

He said the survey was done in two parts, commercial and village.

In commercial, students went in Kokopo and Rabaul town to find out how much business houses spend to import chicken meat, stock feed and chicklets.

In the second part of the survey, the students interviewed villagers at Vudal Block which is sample size of ENB to find out how many chickens they looked after, what was the purpose for keeping village chickens, how they looked after chickens and the difficulties they faced.

He said once the survey was completed the students would use the findings to conduct a one- day training to farmers at Vudal Block.

A student, John Gimmy, said according to the interview the students conducted last Friday, about 90% of those that kept chicken did so without thinking of expanding.

He said most looked after chicken for family consumption.

He said the chickens lacked proper housing as they lived on cocoa trees or slept in kitchens.

Due to lack of proper housing some are stolen, killed and eaten by dogs and birds.

He said villager had shown great interest in expanding the chicken poultry.

The survey was conducted by final year degree (BTA 4) students with the help of Year three students. 

Apart from that, Year 3 students are also doing their practical by assisting a farmer at Vudal Block to construct a fishpond.

Student Fransisco Lauten said the practical was a good learning opportunity for students.

 

 

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