Hans Askov Jensen, 1998. The Beneficial Interaction of Poultry with Locally-generated By-Products 
In: Integrated Bio-Systems in Zero Emissions Applications.
Proceedings of the Internet Conference on Integrated Biosystems.
Eds: Eng-Leong Foo & Tarcisio Della Senta. 1998 http://www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/hans
 
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About the Author
Hans Askov Jensen has been involved in the poultry sector since 1957 and he has conducted research work with emphasis on poultry breeding, management, feeding and organization. Since 1980 he has been associated with poultry production abroad, mainly in the developing countries, from where he has experience from more than 80 missions to Africa, Far and Near East and Central America. The experience cover small scale poultry holdings as well as more commercialized projects. He has special experience in planning and implementation of rural poultry development programme, based on a semi-scavenging model, as well as smallholders in urban areas.
Abstract
A Smallholder Poultry Model has over the past 10 years been developed in Bangladesh comprising a small flock of some 10 semi-scavenging hens as the basic unit and an integrated chain of in-put supplies, services, and marketing to establish and maintain the a small flock of hens. In 1996 it was established 1 million smallholders in Bangladesh and additional 1 million is planned with support from the Danish Development Agency, Asian Development Bank, the International Fund for Agriculture Development, and the World Bank.   

The target group is rural women belonging to the poorest segment of the village population and female-headed families have first priority. About 10 % of the families in the project areas are directly involved in the programme, but the supply and service part of the integration chain also provide supply and services to other families in the village.   

The Concept is based on establishing an enabling environment such as: in-put supply facilities, service facilities, and micro-credit schemes. The facilitator (NGO) provide the learning process through group formation, awareness programme and extension support for establishing and maintaining the Concept. The beneficiaries operate on free market condition and no subsidies are involved at beneficiary level.   

Comprehensive impact surveys have documented a positive impact  already at the end of the 2nd project year: the family income has increased with more than 30 %, the nourishment has been improved, and the savings have drastically been increased. The savings are mainly used to start other income generating activities.   

The main inputs are feed, partly as scavenged feed and partly as supplemental feed. The supplemental fraction of the feed can, to some extend, be by-products from the local milling industry such as wheat bran, rice polish, and oil cakes, but it can also be local produced products such as duck weeds, snails, worms, ants, etc. The research background for utilizing local produced feed as an integral part of a bio-system is limited, but it is certainly a potential for separation of the bio-mass into a fraction for ruminant and a fraction for poultry.   

With background in the positive experiences from Bangladesh in using poultry as a poverty breaker it is established a Danish Network for Poultry Production and Health in developing countries based on a paradigm comprising: human resource development, research and development, and support to planning and implementation of development projects based on a smallholder poultry concept.   

Key words: Traditional poultry holdings, by-products, Bangladeshi mod, semi-scavenging.