THE Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAL) through its Livestock Department recently conducted a capacity boost up training on pig husbandry practices and management for farmers at Falake community in West Kwara’ae, Malaita Province.
Deputy Director of Livestock and Veterinary Services Hearley Atupule facilitated the training that ran from 27th-29th September 2021.
The training was to sharpen Falake community farmer’s capacity on appropriate pig husbandry practices and management for guaranteed profitability.
“Boosting farmer’s capacity to ensure they properly manage their pig farms is necessary to guarantee good productivity,” Atupule said.
The training involved theory and demonstrations where Atupule said farmers learned a lot through field demonstrations being conducted.
He said farmers can realize decent productivity on their pig farms only if they are guided and provided with appropriate information and techniques.
“With that, MAL through its Livestock Department continue to reach out to farmers and provide technical advice, information and conducted training to improve farmer’s capacity or knowledge and skills to ensure they properly manage their farms.”
The training covered the following topics; reasons for keeping animals; the environment that the animals are kept in and, the welfare (wellbeing) of the animals (pigs); planning a pig enterprise; feeding of pigs and sow management; pig disease and parasites in Solomon Islands; pig production; Veterinary tools and techniques and demonstration.
Meanwhile, Atupule said field demonstration was conducted at the newly built piggery project that is owned by Falake community established under the Sustainable Forest Resource Management (SFRM) project, sub-component, livelihood activities which pig farming was selected for Falake community.
“Field demonstration included animal handling/restraining; tags application; weight estimations and injection of animals (pigs) against both external and internal parasites.”
