Prior to last week's trip to Davao, we first visited Doc Gonzales' loading of 700 Sunshines. Soon after that visit, he called me and said that his problem is meeting demand for the chickens he grew. (whhheeew...not a bad problem as far as I'm concerned).
Last week, we saw his batch of 1200. But the story is about natural farming and converting.
Long time ago, he first called me about breeding the F1 chicks that we sell. That was a debate we had and he was insisting that he was a veterinarian etc. Aha...magic word...I said "that's it" you are a veterinarian and should know what is proper.
Next, Doc Gonzales met us in Manila. Very wary about natural farming and non usage of antibiotics.
In his 1st loading, he can't live w/o *etracin...well at least for the 1st 3days! Slowly but surely, he saw that the Sunshines didn't need the antibiotics and herbal tonics worked well. When we visited that batch, we sensed the poultry smell and advised him to use probiotics for disinfecting and odor erasing.
He studied and asked around. By the time we met him again last week....oh now he talks about planting veggies and non stop exclamations about going into organic farming.
Zac Sarian was happy to meet a convert. While we were still shocked at the sudden change in air directions. It is so nice to hear laymen talk about going natural...but for a veterinarian to do so...its like winning the lotto for us!
I have forgotten about this story since I can't access my photos, it somehow got stuck to my SD too. Zac Sarian just called me to ask some additional data for Doc Gonzales (I think he is writing about him)...so the veterfarmer story surfaced :)
I was (and still am) reading the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (?) and he discussed about a farm he visited and observed for several days that rotated (intensive rotation) of cattle, which lived in great harmony with free-range chickens (who get rotated as well with their mobile barn roof), grazing grass (the natural food of beef, not corn or grains), which return by way of dung the minerals to the earth and some eggs for insects. The insects, larvae and grubs that come out of these are great protein source for the chickens (who then act as unpaid laborers doing the sanitation). It was a very intensive type of farming, but what comes out are very good quality meat (beef and chicken) plus great eggs that are best to use in baking. They slaughter chickens in open air ("the best sanitizer" with complete transparency to consumers, which had boggled the minds of meat inspectors who cannot think outside the box and so remotely detached to how humans get food) The trend anyway now for educated people, especially young families, is finding real, good quality food within reasonable price.
ReplyDeleteKudos to you for promoting a parallel type of raising chickens for food!
@ Manang, I hope the trend starts from growing one's own food :)
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