They adopted this strategy after the Nigerian government placed an embargo on importation of key ingredients used for livestock feed manufacturing.
Some of these new therapies were discovered by accident and refined via experimentation till they were confirmed to work. And farm business owners with their personnel, inspired by the results they are getting are exploring ways to adopt low cost alternatives in as many other areas as possible.
===Starts===
You’ve got to know your ratios – if not you’re just going to (hurt or even) kill your birds.
The other website you initially consulted was good to the extent that it pointed out the direction you should go. However the information on offer there could have been much better presented.
There was very little effort made to clean up the prose used for instance, making reading a bit difficult, sometimes confusing. Even more significantly, required quantities and measures to be used, were left out.
Any follower of my writing on Farm Business knows that I strongly advocated adoption of best practice farm management procedures across all areas of a farm business enterprise.
It’s the surest way to ensure consistently reliable performance and minimize unexpected problems in your operations
For instance concerning the use of Bitter Leaf extract as I said earlier with regard to the first website, this was not done.
You see, you’ve got to be able to say, for example – for this number of birds, maybe twice a day, you’ll give them this quantity of say the Bitter Leaf extract to drink.
And even the natural extract you want to give them must be derived through a production process that ensures it is not only safe for them consume, but that it also delivers the desired benefits.
A look at the second website reveals that the author went to great lengths to do the above – with the result that he had practical information in ready-to-use format for readers to study and adopt.
Not just that, he had ANSWERS to their individual questions about how to make use of the information supplied, many times drawing from his own personal experiences doing it.
It goes without saying that there are other websites offering useful and reliable information on the use of this natural remedy for treating diseases like Coccidiosis.
I chose to use this second website in my discussion because he is a Nigerian based in Nigeria who works as a Farm CEO and technical consultant.
In that paper, I made the point that farm CEOs and other key players in the industry need to investigate and compile for sharing across their markets details of their IKS.
I define IKS as unique, original cost, time and effort saving solutions they develop to solve real life problems, or boost performance in their farm businesses.
At the end of the day, what the industry really needs are solutions that have worked for others, which people are comfortable with and able to therefore use repeatedly, with greater assurance of expected results.
I always want to assess a person based on the willingness s/he demonstrates to invest in his/her own brand.
If you look at the first website, it is hosted in blogspot.com.
I don’t have any problem with BlogSpot.
But the fact that it is free makes me put a question mark on it.
Anybody that is running a money making business and is using a free website – I put a question mark on that person .
Why?
Because when you’re making money everybody knows you can run a website on a shoestring budget.
And since the website is to be used to generate sales leads, it only makes sense that you invest in it to boost your brand’s marketing appeal, which can over time yield leads you convert to sales.
So if you’re going to have a website, the truth is to get taken seriously you need to have a proper branded website – or your own custom/branded domain name at the minimum!
You can even have free hosting but get your own branded domain name.
So, when I saw that use of a free domain name on the first website, I just got skeptical.
Then the second thing I saw was very haphazard content.
The purpose of the content posted is good. The intention is honorable. But the fact that s/he did not feel a need to clean out even the prose is a warning.
I’m not saying you have to be an English language professor, but for heaven’s sake there were so many parts of the write-up that could have been cleaned up and polished to facilitate smooth reading and comprehension.
He could have gotten a relative, spouse or friend, or partner to proofread. It was just all over the place.
That just threw red lights in my head.
I’m not trying to tear him/her down. I’m just saying you must use these things I’m mentioning to decide where you’re going to pitch your tent in terms of deciding where you’re going to borrow ideas to use.
This is because some guys just read up some things and put it out there – but their motives are different.
For instance they may be looking for traffic and not necessarily be concerned about fine-tuning the quality of their content to ensure those who use it get the right results. In other words they just want to get as many eyes to see what they want to sell.
They may be presenting agricultural content and not have any reliable know-how to share on it.
S/he might even be saying s/he has a farm and not have one.
There were no photos. There were no videos. There were no examples and the measurements were not provided. S/he just glossed over the entire subject without going into practically relevant detail.
That does very little to help a real life farm CEO trying to adopt this kind of unconventional idea!
You can see from the level of detail provided that the author is a hands-on expert who understands the importance of offering clear and unambiguous information.
Apart from the fact that he offers very practically useful information, another thing is that he already has followers who are obviously real life farm CEOs looking for help on that very subject. As a result he was getting asked questions that he replied to in the comments section.
The truth is that farming is a very practical vocation that requires hands-on involvement if one is to be truly successful at it.
You simply cannot afford to be an absentee practitioner – especially not in this part of the world i.e. Nigeria/Africa.
Having said the above, it is instructive to note that not everyone will have followers or persons fitting his/her target audience profile commenting on his/her blog.
In other words you may come across some website or blog offering information that looks good but with no comments posted on it.
I wrote an article about this some years ago (I’ve written more since – see links below), in which I explain why this might happen and how it is not proof that the website or blog does not have followers.
Indeed my own brand is an excellent case in point because most of my followers/clients rarely choose to interact with me publicly or openly via comments on my blog for instance.
Instead they prefer to send me messages privately via email, SMSes, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc. Others choose to speak with me via phone, WhatsApp etc.
I get paid by 60 to 70% of those who choose to contact me through any of the above mentioned channels (here’s one example) – but you are not likely to see any signs that THAT is happening on my website, blog and other components of my Web Marketing System.
Except of course for those true story based articles I periodically publish in which I share information – with screenshots – about sales conversations and transaction I have with some of them.
So you rarely see comments on my blog from persons fitting my target audience profile. I think most times when I even have any comments at all, it’s on Twitter, Facebook – once in a while, usually someone from another country.
Therefore you cannot say a lack of comments on website or blog content you’re reviewing means the author does not have followers or clients who buy from him/her.
S/he may have serious followership, but if they are like the kinds of people who follow and buy from me, it’s unlikely that you will see them posting comments openly on such content.
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Over the years, I’ve written articles to share my experience based insights about comments as they relate to a blog’s success. Here are some of them:
Deciding If Your Blog Needs Comments To Succeed (5 Questions To Ask Yourself) – No. 2 of 4
Does Your Blog’s Income Earning Ability Depend On Comments Volume? (Additional Insights from 2 Famous Bloggers)
Six Potentially Useful Measures of Your Blog’s Performance (Hint: Comments Vs. Five Others) – No. 3 of 4
Is Your Blog Productive, Or Just Plain Busy? (Interesting Arguments For & Against Blog Comments)
How Far Should You Go To Get Comments?
Using Your Blog To Make Money – Little Used Strategies You Can Exploit – No. 4 of 4
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One of the important requirements for successful marketing and sales is to KNOW YOUR BUYER.
It’s part of the psychology of selling. Understanding their mindset will help you understand the behavior they exhibit and over time you will be able to predict how they will respond to your content – resulting in your improved ability to make gladly pay to get the solutions you offer.
I mention all this to give you information to guide you in choosing where you want to focus your attention to get information you will use in running your farm business.
There are lots of people out there giving advice who don’t have a basis for doing so.
So it’s important to have that in mind.
I wanted to establish that it answers due diligence/best practice questions like the following:
- How to extract the juice needed from the leaves?
- What quantity of the juice extracted from the leaves is to be used to treat the birds?
In other words, the medicinal dosage to apply. So you don’t risk overdosing the birds or triggering some side effects. NB: Bitter leaf actually contains some potent active ingredients, so it would be really unwise to just give the juice to your birds without ensuring careful measurement.
- How to make use of the juice i.e. what procedure to follow in administering it to the birds, for best possible results?
So it’s good to see that this guy has provided such elaborate and potentially useful information.
Having said that, it is important to note that is it within the first few weeks of their lives, as chicks that the birds are most vulnerable to this bacterial disease called Coccidiosis.
But once it manifests and becomes endemic it can be very difficult to eradicate it.
However, an organic or natural therapy of the kind done using Bitter leaf juice makes it possible to safely expose them to treatment for long enough periods of time that can kill off the causative organisms.
Such prolonged administration of treatment for a stubborn infection like Coccidiosis can be difficult, and risky to implement without potentially serious side effects when synthetic drugs (e.g. antibiotics) are used.
Having said the above, I will still add that regardless of how good the information on offer is, you would be wise to proceed with caution.
When you read the article you will see that he recommends using the juice for prevention as well as treatment of infected birds.
So before your birds get exposed to the disease causing organisms, I recommend that you take a subsection of your flock i.e. isolate a set of birds and treat them first.
See how they behave or respond over a few weeks, to be sure that they are not adversely affected.
Then if need be, wait and check to ensure that they actually go though that phase of vulnerability without coming down with the infection, BEFORE you then go on to administer the treatment to the rest of your flock.
On the other hand, when it comes to treating an actual outbreak of Coccidiosis you know that they are likely to die anyway, if you do nothing.
By way of interest, one of the tell tale signs of Coccidiosis infection in the birds is bloody droppings, due the damage to the intestinal wall.
That causes pains to the birds making them less inclined to feed and eventually leading to their death
Now, unlike when trying to prevent the infection, this time around you would administer the treatment to all the infected birds.
Proceed cautiously in this case too. Take your time to carefully assess birds and decide how far to go.The main difference will be in the dosage – and the second website has provided a useful guide.
You can of course over time tweak your usage as you observe the response of the birds over time, to arrive at a best practice rate that you will then document for repeat use – and recommend to or share with other farm owners.
On a final note, you may wish to proactively get more information to guide your efforts in using bitter leaf juice for Coccidiosis treatment or prevention, by getting in touch with a competent vet.
S/he may be able to educate you on what to do based on his/her knowledge of the composition of active ingredients in the bitter leaf juice.
As the saying goes, no knowledge is lost.
===Ends===
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