After practicing traditional agriculture, Nontam Mungrey took poultry farming with Kuroiler chicken due to its higher-yielding breed of around 250 to 280 per kg and suitability to the local conditions.

Nontam Mungrey a lead farmer from the farmer’s group of Jotin Karikhe village from Changlang District of Arunachal Pradesh who decided to rear chicks to have alternate livelihood option apart from agriculture. The group consists of 22 members who are rearing chicks and sharing the profit from its sale.

With a population of 308, most families in the village depend on agriculture as their main source of income and involved in different traditional agriculture practices to earn their livelihood. FARM Northeast programme with the support of its implementing partner Seva Kendra Arunachal East (SKAE) trained farmers on better agricultural practices and livestock management. They developed interest & started enhancing their cultivation of Buckwheat, Potato and Mix vegetable in large scale and increasing its productivity. This has helped them to raise their earnings from a mere Rs. 1, 50,000/- to Rs. 4, 00,000/- per annum.

“We were hardly earning anything until Caritas India came to our village and asked to carry poultry and piggery to enhance income for the group to support the family. It took time, but we gathered courage and started the business”, shares Nontam “as of now we earn 1 to 1.5 lakhs since October 2018”.

Initially, they faced a lot of challenges regarding arranging money to buy chicks and its feed. Whole day women in the society are busy in either agriculture activity or household chores and it becomes very difficult to manage time for rearing the chicks. SKAE motivated and held several rounds of meetings to bring consensus on initiating poultry of Kuroiler Chicken. As of date, more than 100 birds are being reared by the group.

It was just a matter of time when people started developing an interest in the cause knowing the fact that it would benefit them, and they started with huge nos. 250 of coiler chicks in the first, second and third units and received a profit of Rs. 1,50,000/-. The process is continuing with fourth, fifth and sixth unit and units. At present they started selling the forth & fifth units and earning Rs. 1000/- to 1500/- per day.

The success of the group poultry farming encouraged the members to start individual entrepreneurship model towards socio-economic stability and help others to generate employment.