For improved disposal of dead birds, the General Organization for Veterinary Services (GOVS), local veterinary services, and ECTAD facilitated an innovative public-private co-creation process to identify sustainable and scalable solutions implementable with existing capacities and resources.
The participatory dialogue between the broiler farmers and extension officers resulted in co-selecting composting as a solution for safe disposal.
A pilot intervention was conducted in Menoufia and Qalyubia governorates to assess the on-ground effectiveness of composting as a disposal method.
The key findings of the pilot could be summarized as follows:
- Composting is a technically simple way and requires minimal investments at the farm level.
- Compost is an organic fertilizer, safe for use in agricultural soil and free from pathogens.
- The participating farms witnessed a 1% increase in profitability by selling the produced compost or applying it to agricultural land.
- Field veterinarians learned an innovative technical–business approach when providing advice on behavioral change to farmers.
- Composting method proved its sustainability, where 47% of the engaged farmers changed their behavior of disposal of the daily mortality to composting.
“Composting has saved me the hassle of disposing of the daily mortality. Before trying composting, dogs and cats used to enter my farm to eat the dead birds from the garbage, and sometimes they would carry them to my neighbors. Now, I have an appropriate and easy way of disposal that produces fertilizer that I use in my own land.”
Fatouh Zwein – Broiler farmer, Menoufia, Egypt, August 2022