Chicken Coop and Chickens
On February 12th, Jay and I are jet setting to beautiful Costa Rica. As many of you know we like to do a fundraiser before leaving and using the funds to help someone along the way. This year we are renting a vehicle from Nomad America and they have helped us locate a family who needs help in building a chicken coop and purchasing chickens. As per usual we will create a video of the project so that you can see how the project was completed. You can view other videos on Jay's website on the about page Big Tree Promotions
Here is a description from Fabio our Costa Rican friend who is helping us with the project:
The husband and wive's names are Mr. Silian and Lucy. They represent a typical Costa Rican Family from the community of Barrigones located in Puerto Jimenez. They are a humble family with 2 sons, one is in high school and the other has informal jobs every so often.
Mr Silian spends his mornings and afternoons looking for dry coconuts at the rivermouth. He loads as much coconuts as possible on his old bike to bring them home. His wife, Mrs. Lucy, makes coconut oil from the coconuts that her husband brings every day. He makes two trips a day to the rivermouth to look for coconuts. The rivermouth is located 6 km from his house. The water currents will make the dry coconuts that have dropped from trees nearby the river or the beach float to the rivermouth at the high tide.
The coconut picking and coconut oil has become their income now a days, a business that is not stable or constant due to different situations. Quantities are very small as you can imagine.
They currently have some birds (ducks and chickens) but they do not have the specific facilities to raise them properly and to not be hit by predators (fox, wild cats, and many other animals that lives in the surrounding bush lands and forests) and/or the weather.
COMMUNITY PROJECT
The project will consist on building a chicken coop (6m wide x 1.5m tall x 2m long) for a capacity of about 20-30 hens/broilers. The coop will be built on a concrete edge of building blocks (1 block height), metal structure (frame), chicken mesh on the 4 sides and a zinc roof. The coop will also have nests for the hens to lay their eggs.
Marco, who is a community leader at Puerto Jimenez, will donate around 4 days of work to get the coop built and finished. The family will donate food for those days to Marco and a space for sleeping at their house on those working days.
Marco will follow up with the family for a period of 3 months in which he will help them get the chickens and the animal feed. He will also help them on the transportation and sales of the product (eggs or broilers). Marco has a motorbike and he can visit them frequently to help them out in general.
The list of materials needed are:
17 metal tubes 1x1''
12 zinc sheets
1 roll of Chicken Mesh
4 kg of welding rods
2 hinges
2 safety locks
1 metal cutting disc 14''
7 construction rods
53 building blocks
4 concrete bags
We would love your help in helping this family :)
