Baku cabby Zakir Zeynalov always dreamed of taking up poultry farming. Hardly did he reach the age of retirement when he stopped working as a taxi driver and started breeding chickens.
Zakir lives in Mashtaga, a village on the outskirts of Baku. No one taught him how to farm poultry, so he learned the nuances of the profession, firstly from manuals, and secondly just learning from the mistakes he made.
He bought an incubator at Sederek Shopping Centre, the biggest market in Azerbaijan. They sell absolutely everything there, from shoes to wallpaper.
The incubator looks like a big suitcase made from polystyrene. According to Zakir it can hold 104 eggs. Within 21 days 80 chickens hatched out of the 104 eggs he placed inside it.
But not everything is so simple – one needs to make sure that the eggs are kept warm evenly at all times. They continuously turn inside the incubator, but not always correctly, and sometimes need to be turned manually. And if there is no electricity, the incubator must immediately be covered with a towel so that it does not cool down.
“When the electricity was off for longer than half an hour, I connected a car battery to the incubator. However, the power generally doesn’t go off very often – a couple of times a month for a short while. “
When the chicks hatch, they need special care: no food on the first day, boiled sweetened water on the second day, and only then can they be given special food.
Zakir wants to expand his small business and start breeding turkeys, sheep and other livestock.
