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Manila Bulletin devider Drive devider Francis Christian Fornoles and Vinnie Bañaria: The Risktaker Farmers

Francis Christian Fornoles and Vinnie Bañaria: The Risktaker Farmers

Published Mar 13, 2024 03:53 am

Together with Vinnie Bañaria, we started small, with buying the seven chicks and growing them to become breeders, as well as the housing and feed expenses. At first, we had seven pieces of Italian Line Black Australorp chicks; we grew them, and after eight months, we produced our own chicks on the farm. 

Francis and Vinnie
Francis Christian Fornoles, together with Vinnie Bañaria, started small, with buying the seven chicks and growing them to become breeders, as well as the housing and feed expenses.

We started free range chicken farming during the pandemic. Currently, we are raising Rhode Island Red, Black Australorps, and Barred Plymouth Rock chickens on our 3⁄4 hectare farm.

Researching Potentials

In college, I learned about free range chicken farming and the beautiful breeds of chicken. I researched it and saw the potential of it as a business.

We have no background in agriculture and only relied on the available videos online about free range chicken farming. We watched the free seminars by Dr. Erwin Cruz and Dr. Ma. Asuncion Beltran on YouTube and other chicken vloggers.

When the chickens were about to produce eggs, we built breeding pens, big brooders, growing pens, and ranging areas. Our aim during that time is to sell organic table eggs. We did not expect that we would also be able to sell chicks, fertile eggs, and ready to breed chickens.

Chickens
Currently, the couple are raising Rhode Island Red, Black Australorps, and Barred Plymouth Rock chickens in their 3⁄4 hectare farm.

The Perfect Marketplace

The next step we took was to identify how to market our products effectively. We created our farm’s logo, taglines, and Facebook page to finally introduce our farm into the online community. We made sure that our page not only provided marketing but different trivia to also guide our customers and followers as well.

Like most free range chicken farms, our farm also struggles with natural occurrences such as typhoons or days with heavy rain. What we do is, when there’s a typhoon coming, evacuate our chickens immediately, put all of them in one sturdy housing, and cover it with ‘trapal’ and plastic covers. We make sure that the chickens, especially the chicks, stay dry and warm.

We always have positive visions on our farm. We see it succeeding in the market, providing our customers with high quality chicken breeds, quality table eggs, and meat products.

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