A three-day seminar to equip small ruminants and poultry keepers in the Yilo Krobo District of the Eastern Region with modern breeding techniques to boost production has ended at Nkurakan, a foodstuff producing and marketing centre.
In all, 80 persons attended the seminar organised by the Krobo-Danish Association (Krobodan), a non-governmental organisation.
The participants were taken through the basic and modern methods of goats and sheep breeding, as well as poultry keeping using simple but scientific methods.
These in turn will be required to educate breeders in about 210 communities and hamlets in the Yilo Krobo and the Upper Manya Krobo districts where almost every family engages in the breeding of ruminants.
Some of the communities are Nkurakan, Ahenkwa, Nsutapong, Samlesi and Sikabeng.
Veterinary officer
Guiding the participants through the processes of production, a veterinary officer, Dr Ebenezer Ghamli, said the seminar had become necessary because the animal health delivery system which hitherto assisted those in the rural areas had collapsed, leaving the farmers to their fate and losing a lot of their fowls and animals through unhygienic practices.
Diseases
To him, keepers of ruminants and fowls in the rural areas should be able to detect and control diseases associated with the ruminants and fowls, and that the way was to train the participants who would in turn impact the knowledge acquired to others.
That, to him, would make it possible for rural dwellers who normally kept a limited number of fowls, especially the local ones, and the ruminants to produce more and generate the required revenue for their sustenance.
The Secretary of Krobodan, Mr Joshua Nyumuah, said his outfit, which has been operating in the Yilo Krobo area since 1989, had come out with a number of poverty reduction activities which were yielding positive results in the area.
These include bee-keeping, bead-making, afforestation, vaccination of pests and the raising of day-old chicks which are given out to people in the area at a reduced price.
Human rights
Apart from that, the NGO educates rural dwellers on issues such as family planning, gender and domestic violence, human rights, conflict resolution as well as encouraging them to embrace the health insurance scheme.
In the Yilo Krobo District and its adjacent Upper Manya Krobo District, almost all the people in the rural areas rear fowls and ruminants on a small scale for their protein requirement and as additional source of income for their livelihood.
Benefits
Madam Abena Kosi, who, together with her husband and four children relied on a few birds and goats for her livelihood, was hopeful that the training programme would be beneficial to them.
“At first we did not know that the pens should be airy and clean at all times for the goats to breed,” Madam Kosi said after the training programme.