Sustainable Agriculture: Notes from the Ground

Oct 24: Poultry and Power

The first time we bought chicks for the farm we lost half of them in no time. A sudden rainstorm blew water in through a window and some of the chicks caught a chill. There was no electricity for several days as the step-down transformer for the area broke down. In the absence of light and warmth the chicks huddled together and the weaker ones got crushed to death. By the time we got our act together with mustard oil lamps fifteen of a lot of twenty five were gone. This was the trigger for my interest in solar lighting. We could not depend on the local electricity supply and therefore to the extent feasible we must be independent of the grid. The best place to start with was lighting. Irrigation too was important and we were spending way too much on diesel for the lift pump but the capital costs even after the hefty government subsidy of nearly 50% were forbidding. Plus solar powered pumps in the market such as TATA BP Solar's pumps could do around 40 feet while our water comes up from 65 feet; better not take a chance we felt.

One of our co-founders Kamaljit had run into Sanjay Gupta, a Boeing pilot working for Air India, at a camp on innovation run by Professor Anil Gupta, familiar to readers of the Sarvodaya blogs. Sanjay is fascinated by the Light a Billion Lamps solar lighting programme of TERI, the environment and energy thinktank. His dream is to turn one village in Bihar into a model village and then 'cut and paste' across the country. Given our emerging interest in solar power, Kamaljit connected me with Sanjay and we met in Gurgaon where he lives to drive up to the farm. Sanjay made a statement on carbon neutrality by driving up in his two-seater electic car, Reva. I could imagine a bumper sticker – "my other car (ahem)…is a Boeing 777". When we reached the farm, Sanjay began a demonstration of the power of solar with wellpracticed ease. On hand were the farm team and two farmers from the area - Rati Ram and another Sanjay.

First was a small wood gasifier rigged to a 3W solar panel. We watched fascinated as Sanjay made tea for the seven of us with a handful of wooden twigss. There was hardly any smoke after the initial ignition using a thimbleful of kerosene. The solar panel drove a small fan and the flame brightened as the flue gas, valuable fuel which is largely wasted in a traditional chullah, caught fire. We played with the fan speed by waving our arms in front of the panel. The same panel was then connected to a 100 lumens lantern. A full day of charge is sufficient for about 14 hours. This was the lamp we were looking for our poultry chicks. Cost: Rupees 1800 ($35) split roughly half and half between the lamp and the panel. The gasifier was an American product and costly. Sanjay's aim is to bring the cost down to about Rupees 2000. Meanwhile he is happy spreading the lamps around his adopted village. By splitting the charging and lighting functions he is helping create small businesses. A villager takes three rupees for a full charge every third day. The cost of Rupees one per day for the user compares well with the running cost of a kerosene lamp. I told Sanjay about our interest in solar irrigation and he mentioned how he was using a pump designed for 40 feet to pull up water from 80 feet. He also showed us how because of a mismatch between our irrigation pump's power and the pipe used to bring water up we were not using the pump efficiently. "Like driving with the brakes on." We showed Sanjay around the farm and struck a deal – he helps us with energy issues and we help him take dairy and integrated farming to his model village.

Back to poultry. This is what three months of running a poultry section have taught us. First the fixed costs. A 100 sq ft mud-brick-bamboo structure for 25-50 birds, say next to the family home or an existing dairy section, should cost around Rs. 5000 (mainly bricks, with labour free). A cement-brick construction will last longer but may be ten times more expensive. The birds need approximately 1 sq ft each when they are month old, going up to 2 sq ft. If bought as day old chicks they cost around Rs 10-20 a bird but you may have to add a 50-100% transportation cost. The water and feed trays could be terracota instead of plastic; this will keep both mother earth and the village potter happy. A few broken chairs or a makeshift wooden structure could serve as perch for the layers. If electricity is not a problem, an incandescent lamp can serve as brooder (a kerosene lamp could be a fire hazard). A few egg trays and a couple of coolers for transporting the meat complete the list.

Second, the running costs. Let us assume labour is 'free' i.e. a member from the family can spare an hour and a half every day for cleaning the henhouse, cleaning and filling up the water and feed trays and picking up the eggs etc. This leaves feed and marketing as the main running costs. Feed from a factory costs Rs. 625-700 per bag of 50 kg. A bird eats approximately 80 gms a day over 7 weeks. One bag of feed will therefore last twenty five of them a month. The feed bag can last longer if the birds can pick termite, grains and bugs from around the farm. If it is a purely broiler operation; the birds would be ready for slaughter in 8 weeks. The farmer could start with 25; add 25 after a month. Cull the first 25 in the third month and so on. Marketing costs would be butchering and dressing(say Rs 10-15 a bird), ice for packing the meat in coolers (Rs 1-2 per bird) and transporation to the market (Rs 3-4 per bird if the market is within 5-10 kilometers). Thus a lot of 25 birds would cost the farmer Rupees 2000 and fetch him Rupees 3000-4000 depending on the market. The net result is additional income of Rupees 500-1000 per month for an investment of approximately Rupees 6000. If the bird variety is dual-purpose you could add some incomes from the eggs to this 'all-in all-out' broiler operation. Some costs I have not factored in are vaccination, rice husk for covering the floor and lime for cleaning. However, these pale in comparison with the benefits of chicken manure and termite management that the hens do for you. Chicken manure itself becomes a key input in mushroom compost preparation.

The biggest challenge for an organic poultry operation is feed, followed by disease management. We have so far been lucky with the latter. The reasons are plenty of space, light and exercise for the birds as well as the use of natural tonics like amla (Indian gooseberry) juice and garlic. The first challenge we are still struggling with. I asked our feed supplier to take out the medicines (liver tonic, vitamins and antibiotics) as well as products of animal origin (bone and fish meal) from the feed. You will be shocked to know that this results in a price revision of only Rupees 30 per bag. The worst stuff is the cheapest. The main ingredients of feed are maize, bajra (a valuable source of Methionine), soyabean/mustard oil cake, rice polish and Dicalcium Phosphate or Limestone powder. We have just harvested our own bajra and corn. We will be producing our own mustard in some months and we will be fixing our own feed grinder soon. That is when I can tell you about the economics of making your own feed.