One sunny day at Luc Ngan district in Bac Giang Province, farmer Bang Van Dao generously greeted his neighbors and FAO staff members to present his hatchery and chicken farm biosecurity model to inspire good biosecurity measures to fellow farmers in his district. As a husband and father of 2 children, Mr. Bang Van Dao is a full-time hatchery and chicken parent flock farmer and one of the beneficiaries from FAO’s improvement of farm management and biosecurity practices project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The commune animal health worker told me there was going to be a free 4-day biosecurity training course in Bac Giang. That’s how I first got to know about this project. I was glad to know this was happening because I never took any biosecurity and management courses since I started farming.” He continued “Previously, I tried to study by myself by looking up books but they were too complicated and difficult to follow. However, with the training from poultry production training experts, it was really easy to understand and follow the biosecurity measures.”

The Department of Livestock Production of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (DLP-MARD) in collaboration with FAO Viet Nam’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) has trained 20 training experts in Northern Viet Nam to educate and inspire small and medium scale farmers like Bang Van Dao to roll out clean and safe procedures in hatcheries and parent flock farms. This training focuses on how to keep a healthy chicken flock for disease prevention and better productivity and how to manage hatcheries and fertile eggs to improve day-old-bird quality.

“After implementing good management practices and biosecurity measures for three months, I’m actually starting to see results.” said Bang Van Dao proudly. “According to my hatchery records, we had about 3.2% of increase in hatchability rate. Before, not all the collected eggs managed to hatch. And even if they did, not all chicks ended up surviving during the first few days. However, after applying easy biosecurity methods like keeping the hatchery area clean, separating incubation and hatching area and fumigating eggs, hatched chicks are so much healthier now. I’m pretty satisfied with the results during the first three months, and I’m looking forward to see how much it will improve in the future.”

After Bang Van Dao showed the hatching area and the fumigation procedures, he took his neighbor farmers to the garden area where his parent flock chickens were freely running around in the garden.

“In the garden area, we applied a new water drainage to make it easier to clean the farm. As you can see, the farm is clean and the flock looks a lot healthier too. The cleaner environment makes it more pleasant for my wife and me to work since it smells less.” He added “The new feeders and drinking water system also keeps the food and water more hygienic from feces and dirt, enabling the flock to have uncontaminated food and drink.”

Following successful stories like Bang Van Dao’s, FAO ECTAD Viet Nam is currently expanding the project to seven other models in Northern Viet Nam, and training more poultry production training experts in Southern Viet Nam. From these activities, FAO ECTAD Viet Nam aims to kill two birds with one stone; to effectively prevent avian influenza at the source and improve livelihoods at the same time. 

“Receiving the training was such a turning point for my business and I hope to motivate my neighbors to apply the biosecurity methods and experience good results like I did. In the future, I would like to expand my business and be able to provide a better life to my family.” Bang Van Dao said.