“Today I have 11 eggs!”


Ngo Quoc Dung | March 5, 2021

Thao and her son at a local market.

”I was on my way to the market and met Vui, who is the head of the hen raising group in my village. She told me some visitors were waiting for me at home. I rushed back home and wondered who the guests were.”

Cam Thi Thao is a Thai woman living in Phuc Than commune in Vietnam. Thao and her husband focus on planting paddy rice on some land from her husband’s family. Their harvests aren’t enough for the family of five, which includes Thao, her husband, her 11- and 14-year-old children, and Thao’s aging mother-in-law. Thao, therefore, raises some chickens and ducks to earn additional income for the family.

Thao learned of CWS when she joined an info-sharing session about chicken raising that Vui led. Vui is the head of the Women’s Union in her village and was trained through the CWS project earlier. Thao had raised chickens for some time, but the methods she heard during Vui’s info-sharing session were different than the ones she had been using. As a result of that training, she decided to join the CWS program group to raise chickens for eggs.

“The first hens provided by the project in early June have already laid 3-4 litters of eggs. Each lays from 12 to 15 eggs. I used 20 eggs for the hens to hatch, but just a few chicks hatched. Maybe, the hens are not mature yet. I used about 120 other eggs for food or to sell for 5,000 Vietnamese Dong [22 cents] each to buy other foods.”

Thao with the incubator.

Thao later joined another information session about using incubators to hatch eggs, and this really was a new thing for everyone. Our team supplied an incubator for her group to use, and Thao volunteered to keep it at her home. When she showed me the incubator, Thao said: “We put 54 eggs for this hatching time. I scan them every day. All the eggs are developing well–only one egg did not fertilize, so I took it out already. It’s now the 16th day, so the chicks will come in five days. I can now manage the incubator well and can tell others, too. It’s good that we can produce more chicks at a time while the hens can rest and produce more eggs.”

As I walked with her to a local market, Thao happily added: “The hens lay at least three eggs a day. As there is a small market nearby, I usually go to the market in late afternoon since the hens lay eggs in the morning or around noon time. Today I have 11 eggs. It’s good to sometimes replace the eggs with other alternatives for my kids.”

I’m so proud of Thao, who is doing everything she can to improve her family’s lives each day. I would like to thank LDS Charities for their support to help people like Thao and many others to make their life better through CWS chicken raising groups.

Ngo Quoc Dung is the CWS Country Representative in Vietnam.