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Well, it's been a time of getting quite an education in chickens for me. Despite the fact that I raise chickens on a large farm, I'm learning how little I actually know about chickens. My good friend Larry has been filling me in and it certainly changes the perspective on the project. Larry got in touch with Haiti Broilers which operates in Port-au-Prince and recieved a price list from them. It seems they offer not only hatched chicks, but feed and equipment as well that will allow us to purchase some things in country rather than shipping them over. Most importantly we learned that we can purchase 20 day old chicks and begin the project without the need for hatching ourselves. It seems logical to begin the project in this manner and later incorporate our own hatching if it seems wise and cost effective. For the price of fuel and $1.46 US dollars we can pick up as many 20 day old chicks as we like. These could be raised on site and half sold to finance the project and half eaten. Beginning this way we may be able to come up with a sustainable project requiring only the road work, fencing, water pump, shelter, and feeders. Eventually we would need to look into the egg laying side and whether we would want to incubate on site. That brings up the other part of my education. Breeds. It seems a meat bird makes a very lousy egg layer unless you have a commercial setup for them. What we can do is purchase laying hens of a different breed and essentially run the operation without hatching anything ourselves until we find a way to get a breed into the country that can both lay and grow for meat. One possible solution is to raise capons which is kinda of like making a bull a steer. There is a kit available for about $50 that will do this. As we work out the details concerning eggs, capons, etc., I believe we can move forward with the initial project of raising meat birds as soon as we can raise the money for it. I'm going to be updating the site to reflect this approach as soon as I can. Larry has also designed a portable building capable of withstanding hurricane winds that may work as the shelter we need for the chickens. We'll be working on incorporating it into the project if we can, and it should further reduce the overall budget needed. I'm glad to see how many resources are actually available in Haiti for the chicken farmer. The travel logistics are a pain, but if we can reduce the transportation to a minimum and purchase chicks and feed and equipment all at one time it will help reduce costs