Amo Farm alleviates poverty with Noiler Bird initiative

In a bid to empower and improve the living standards of rural women in Nigeria, Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery Limited has resolved to fight poverty in the country through its noiler bird initiative.

The noiler bird is a natural cross breeding process of layers, boilers with the local birds carried out by Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery Limited.

The initiative which is a rural development endeavour by the farm is to help reduce poverty among rural women by improving their quality of life through the rearing of noiler birds for chicken and egg production with fewer resources.

“We started to think about the noiler initiative six years ago on what we can do to as a company improve the wellbeing and empower average Nigerians in the rural areas who do not have enough food to feed themselves and their children properly,” said Ayoola Oduntan, group managing director, Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery Limited during a recent address to journalist.

“The noiler bird is a dual purpose bird that grows quickly like the boiler but not as quickly, and lay many eggs like the layers but not as many, but most importantly it would survive the backyard environment on less resources,” Oduntan said.

He noted that the noiler birds cheap to rear because of its ability to feed on remnants from the kitchen and farms. It can lay four times the number of eggs the local birds lay and can grow two and half times bigger.

To revive the abandoned backyard and semi-intensive farming system that constitutes about 70 percent of total bird population, the farm has partnered with the first lady of Edo State to supply noiler birds to women in the rural communities of the state in an effort by the state government to tackle poverty. 

Betsy Obaseki, first lady of Edo state explained that the partnership provides another opportunity to re-emphasise the need to dismantle the barrier, which prevents women from realising their potentials and contribute fully to the economic and socio political life of their communities.

“With our partnership with Amo group, I believe female presence will be recognised and our women given more important roles because a society desirous of development cannot afford to treat them with less significance, the issues and voices of half of its population,” Obaseki said.

According to Oduntan, the noiler offspring is resistant to diseases like the local birds and the beef is tougher than the commercial broiler and they can be reared with no antibiotics and chemicals as they can be transformed into ‘organic chicken.

Poultry feed constitutes 70 percent of farmers expenses in running a poultry business in the country. But with the noiler initiative, farmers spends spend less in feed as noiler birds can feed on household remnants.

Recently, the UN warned that 1.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition could die this year, owing to famine in Northern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

With the noiler initiative, agric stakeholders said the issue of malnutrition and famine in the northern region can be addressed, calling on the government to key into the initiative by partnering with the farm on the initiative.

The initiative will also help the country achieve one of the key targets of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Giving details of the business model of the initiative, Bunmi Oluwalasinu, country coordinator, Amo Farm, believes the programme would help eradicate poverty and malnutrition in the country, especially in the rural areas.

She disclosed that the commercial noiler chicks will be produced by the company owned hatcheries in different parts of the country and supply the day old chicks to Mother Units across the country.

Josephine Okojie