Life after Newcastle Disease

Farmers in Iganga discussing their experiences with KUKUSTAR in 2012.

Poultry farming is based on numbers and success rate. For a rural or commercial poultry farmer, success is calculated almost entirely by numbers. Although the size and reproductive rate of the birds carry a lot of value, the number the farmer has to sell-off or breed is much more important when it comes to having a steady household income.

When Newcastle Disease (ND) hits a farmer’s flock of birds, it can be a traumatizing experience. Whether it is a commercial farmer with 3,000 birds or a local farmer with five, the devastation is still the same. For many farmers, being hit by ND and losing their birds is enough to deter them from continuing with the practice of poultry keeping. When we ask them at trade shows or other public forums if they would start again now that we have given them the information they need and access to a reliable vaccine, some farmers still shy away from the idea of starting again; it is evident that they are still haunted by the memory of their catastrophic losses. Worse yet, these farmers must look past a common saying and misconception in some communities that if you want to be poor, you venture into poultry keeping.

With our KUKUSTAR Newcastle Disease vaccine, we give the farmers access to a dependable and effective vaccine that will help them protect their poultry from this killer disease. For the rural farmer with a few birds, we offer droppers of the ready-made vaccine, sold in doses of 25-30 (one dose per bird). For the commercial farmer, we offer vials of 500 doses that must be reconstituted using spring water and then administered through drinking water.

If administered the way we designed it, which is through a single drop in one eye every three months, this vaccine gives the farmer a renewed confidence that each of their birds has been vaccinated; something they can do on their own or with the help of others. Administration through drinking water or through aerosol is more costly because it requires frequent repetition to make sure every bird has had access to its dose of the vaccine.

We need to encourage the farmers who have left the practice to return to poultry farming as a source of income. But the only way we can encourage them to do so is by showing them that they can protect their birds with a vaccine that works and is accessible.  Some of the farmers that lost their birds to ND had already vaccinated them before they died. The most likely reason is that they had used a heat-liable vaccine, which has a two-hour efficacy window at room temperature after reconstitution, and if it had fallen outside that time frame without a cooling system during delivery in the field, then any dose administered would have been ineffective. Other reasons also include, late vaccination (the birds were already sick), improper administration, and over-dilution during reconstitution of the vaccine.

Our KUKUSTAR ND vaccine is thermostable and can last for three days at room temperature without losing efficacy, which helps address the challenge of a cold-chain delivery system. In addition to this, as part of our quality assurance, we have chosen to open our own KUKUSTAR shops where farmers can buy the vaccine directly in order to ensure the quality and proper use of our vaccine up to the farmer level.

Trust is everything if we want to get these farmers back into poultry keeping, so we are choosing to lead by example and show them that the vaccine does work. We want them to know that we are taking their concerns and negative experiences seriously, and that we can make a difference.