Zhao Ke (second right) and local technicians check eggs in the hatchery room (COURTESY PHOTO) 

Sindayigaya Evariste, owner of Safe Chicken Farm in the suburb of Bujumbura, capital of Burundi, felt nervous each time his hens hatched chicks. Though he and his workers tried to provide the best environment for the hens, only a small portion of chicks would hatch. In Burundi, there are many other poultry farmers like Evariste who are suffering without artificial hatching technologies and have to rely on hens to hatch chicks. 

Burundi boasts the perfect climate for poultry industry development with mild temperature all year round and almost no extreme weather conditions. However, owing to the lack of technologies and professional expertise, the success ratio of chick hatching is quite low, with imported eggs being 50 percent and domestic eggs only 35 percent. This also directly leads to high poultry prices, influencing the pockets of locals. 

But this challenge could soon be a thing of the past. The fourth group of Chinese agricultural experts to Burundi was recently dispatched to the country by the Chinese Government to help with its agricultural development. Zhao Ke, a poultry development expert, is one of them. 

Zhao, 40, had worked as a veterinarian in Nanyang Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center in central China's Henan Province for 17 years. In April 2017, he applied for a course to learn how to become a foreign-aid professional organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China. The course and his interest in training finally bore fruit when he got the opportunity to go to Burundi on an assistance mission. 

"I have never worked in Africa before. But I often heard of the continent from my colleagues who worked there and I also hoped to get an opportunity," Zhao told ChinAfrica. "I hope I can use my expertise and do something beneficial." 

Addressing the challenge 

Zhao reached Burundi on March 14 this year. Once there, he started to investigate long-lasting problems affecting local poultry farmers like Evariste. Owing to the high failure rate, local farmers are now reluctant to hatch chicks. Imported baby chicks from countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are quite expensive for local farmers. In addition, to import chicks, farmers also need to obtain import permits and go through the inspection and quarantine  procedures, adding costs to poultry raising. 

"Hatching chicks is an important link in poultry industry development for any country. Without progress in egg hatching, it is impossible for a country to develop the poultry industry in a healthy way," said Zhao. He decided to demonstrate to local farmers and technicians the technology of artificially hatching chicks, starting with Evariste's Safe Chicken Farm. 

Zhao first analyzed the problems Evariste encountered while having his chicks hatched, and the first thing he did was to redesign his hatchery room configuration. 

"Owing to the high temperature in his hatchery, it was difficult to control the humidity because of fast evaporation. In addition, poor ventilation also affected the hatching process," said Zhao. He and his colleagues put water-proof film and straw on the hatchery roof and renovated the windows so as to improve ventilation. 

"After the innovation, we can now control the temperature and humidity while hatching chicks," said Zhao. 

Other areas that needed attention were the poor maintenance of existing equipment in the hatchery rooms and lack of spare parts. With help from the Chinese Embassy in Burundi and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, Zhao bought the parts from China and fixed the equipment. 

Then, he had to solve the last problem: getting high-quality eggs. Zhao contacted a breeder farm in Kenya and obtained the import permit. 

During the hatching process, Zhao monitored the temperature and humidity of the hatchery, adjusting it every few hours. 

"Many local technicians had little knowledge about egg hatching and I showed them every step during the process," said Zhao. 

After 21 days of careful observation, chicks began to hatch. The effort of Zhao and his local colleagues was rewarded by a total of 1,672 chicks hatched from 1,785 fertilized eggs, with a success rate of 93.6 percent. 

An appreciative Evariste wrote to the Burundian Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock and Chinese Embassy in Burundi, expressing his gratitude to Zhao and the other Chinese agricultural experts, adding that he was now confident of expanding his business. 

According to Dieudonne Nsengiyumva, an official of the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock of Burundi, it was the first time that egg artificial hatching succeeded in Burundi. He hoped that the Chinese experts could travel to other provinces to give similar skills transference so that it could help improve the animal husbandry industry of the whole country. 

The team's accomplishments were also acknowledged by Li Changlin, Chinese Ambassador to Burundi, who also visited Safe Chicken Farm to see the results firsthand. 

Zhao Ke (center) demonstrates how to raise chicks (COURTESY PHOTO) 

Big mission 

Zhao began his big mission of promoting the technology of artificially hatching chicks throughout Burundi by giving training sessions on the technologies and making plans to establish breeder farms of parent chickens to cut the cost of importing eggs for this purpose. 

"Locally producing high-quality hatching eggs is the fundamental way to improve the poultry industry in Burundi," said Zhao, adding however that this would need to be done step by step. 

As high-standard breeder farms need huge investment, Zhao thinks he should first expand the scale of artificial chick hatching so that farmers can accumulate more profits. They can then invest in building breeder farms. In addition, the links in the local poultry breeding industry development, such as feed management and disease prevention and control, are not in line with the requirements of modern poultry development. It is thus necessary to train local technicians and farmers advanced poultry breeding technologies. Dr. Nyokwishimira Alfred, an official from Burundian Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, agrees with Zhao, noting that his ministry would like to work with Chinese experts to establish modern animal breeding and disease prevention and control systems. 

Zhao is optimistic about the way forward. "I will start from artificially hatching more chicks so as to benefit local farmers. Then, we can gradually improve Burundi's animal husbandry industry with support from the Burundian Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock," he said.  

(Comments to lijing@chinafrica.cn)