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HEALTHIER HENS

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STARTED: Incubation Program 2021

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Dr. Kikiope Oluwarore
Co-founder & Head of Field Operations

SEED GRANT: $100,000

MONEY FUNDRAISED TO DATE (Jan 2023):  $220,00

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Isaac Esparza

Co-founder & Head of Logistics

TEAM SIZE: 6

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Lukas Jasiunas, PhD
Head of Research

WEBSITE: https://www.healthierhens.com/

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Improving the welfare of egg-laying hens via cost-effective dietary interventions.

CURRENT OR PREDICTED IMPACT:

  • Providing resources and training to local Kenyan farmers to sensitize them to animal welfare, including feed quality and bone health issues.

  • Key stakeholder connections that can be evolved to include feed intervention asks in corporate campaigns, certification schemes, etc.

  • Transparent communication regarding scale-down efforts, so the EA community can learn from their progress, failures, and processes.

COST EFFECTIVENESS:

  • Initial cost-effectiveness analysis shows that Healthier Henscan start improving the lives of hens at $1.42 per hen upon implementation, by the end of year two.

  • Lobbying efforts, if legislation and enforcement is passed, would increase impact to $0.10 per hen over 10 years. Sam Nolan was kind enough to question and investigate their lobbying CEA.

SIGNIFICANT UPDATES: 

  • After an extensive country selection process, Healthier Hens selected Kenya as the pilot country of operations. In March 2022, they hired a full-time Country Manager who has helped them connect with 35+ farms, 12 feed mills, 13 government officials and industry leaders, as well as scope 7 of 15 egg farming prevalent counties. They have also submitted 26 commercial feed samples for testing as they gather data for their upcoming feed fortification trial. 

  • As they entered year 2 of their operations, the plan was to promote hen welfare knowledge and capacity through farmer workshops, outreach and veterinarian training. This endeavored to enable them to conduct a baseline assessment of keel bone fracture prevalence in Kenya, and measure the direct efficacy of dietary interventions on keel bone fractures via pilot feed trials.

  • Split feeding trial, where the hens will get most of their calcium needs in the evening, started in Switzerland in October 2022 as planned. 

  • As of March 2023, Healthier Hens will become a volunteer-led organization. This difficult decision was made due to the current fundraising landscape, and the belief that it will not change in the near future. This means that on-the-ground activities in Kenya will cease and become dormant until further notice. The main goals now include transparent reviews of their situation, finalizing farmer and intervention resources, and strategizing potential pivots for long-term impact.

ACHIEVEMENTS: 

  • Introduced their intervention to relevant animal welfare and poultry experts, industry professionals, NGOs, and the greater EA community.

  • Selected a country of operations (Kenya), after a rigorous and systematic country scoping exercise.

  • Facilitated a feed trial in collaboration with the leading keel bone fracture and hen welfare research group.

  • Completed Volumes 1 & 2 of their Literature Review on feed fortification.

  • Held three farmer workshops in Kenya focused on promoting farmed animal (specifically, hen) welfare knowledge and capacity.

  • Established an initial Advisory Board from key stakeholder groups.

  • Supported community building for Effective Altruism.

IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS:

ROOM FOR MORE FUNDING IN 2023 

  • To re-start and complete key activities, $166k 

  • Funding proposal

  • The Healthier Hens’ co-founder team has taken the difficult decision to scale down activities due to the long-term funding landscape changing in the Farmed Animal Welfare space. As they navigate through this change, Healthier Hens will be run voluntarily, without on-the-ground activities, until further notice. Healthier Hens’ resources and research will continue to be made publicly available online.

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