The pilot was held in three regions in Tanzania (Gmboto, Tegeta, Kim andolu) with 19 farmers. We, therefore, selected Single Spark, as they have a state-of-the-art technology, which can be used to formulate animal feed. The farmers didn’t have the technology to make good feed formulation. “One of their challenges is the low productivity from the chicken due to poor nutrition. A total of 4,400 birds were involved in the study.įrederick Baijukya, a scientist at IITA and coordinator of the N2Africa project, said most of the farmers the project works with, and especially women, also keep poultry.
The farmers involved in the study divided their broilers into two batches and fed one half with the usual feed and the other with the self-prepared FeedCalculator mix and after six weeks compared animal growth and feed costs. This resulted, on average, to 80% higher profit due to lower feed costs and higher weight of the birds. The pretest results showed that broilers fed using recipes suggested by the app had on average 15% higher weight and that the app on average reduced the cost of feed by 31% compared to regular commercial feed.
It will be available this December in the Google Play Store and will be free for all smallholder poultry farmers all over the world. The app was co-created by leading Dutch nutritionists and livestock experts in partnership with farmers in developing countries and was tested by the NGO called BRAC and IITA in Tanzania. Chicken feed made following calculations from the app.