Group I of Vinh Thai Chicken Raising Club Sells Produce with Profits
Currently, prices for farm produce are fluctuating hugely. Exports to and from China have ground to a halt with fears of Corona virus swirling. This has meant giant losses for many farmers and windfall gains for some lucky others.
Fortunately, when Group I from our Chicken Raising Club in Vinh Thai met yesterday, Thursday the 20th February, to report on their chicken growing efforts, the news was overwhelmingly positive. Corona had not negatively affected the price they received, and by selling in the lead up to Lunar New Year, they earned very favourable prices for their produce. For each chicken sold, they were paid in the range of 100,000 to 140,000 VND, and most club members had sold 95 chickens, making a total, maximum income of up to 13 million VND or $550 USD. To put these numbers into perspective, Viet Nam’s per capita income is less than 2,000 USD while club members’ expenses were between 4 and 5 million VND.
The income of $550 USD largely exceeded our expectations at the beginning of the programme, and while part of the success is undoubtedly due to the chickens being sold just prior to Lunar New Year, there are other reasons to be happy. Club members reported that the new breed of chicken introduced by the Club is well suited to the conditions and easy to raise, and with a 95% chicken survival rate (as reported by the Club members) and average weight of about 1.3 kg per chicken, we are confident that Professor Ba’s training was highly effective.
Raising and selling their first flock of chickens concludes the first stage of the programme for Group I. Club members now have the knowledge and skills to raise chickens and we will shortly be connecting members to wholesale baby chick sellers, so Club members might put these skills to work once more.
The final take away from the day’s events came from the meeting with the Vinh Thai People’s Committee. Discussions centred around building the Vinh Thai Chicken brand (in much the same way that Hue is famous across Viet Nam for our delicious Bun Bo Hue), to support all chicken farmers in Vinh Thai, even those not in our programme. Another point of interest was extending microfinance services to Club members to support the expansion of chicken raising businesses – watch this space!
Here are Club members discussing the project cycle and a visual review.
Hearts for Hue would like to give particular thanks to the Vice Chairman of the Vinh Thai People’s committee, Ms Be and to Professor Ba for their attendance at Thursday’s meeting and for their support through the cycle. Many thanks go equally to the Rotary International for generously funding the programme.
Read more about the Club members under news.
