EUR 300 investment by Mr. J. Thurdin

We have now received the second investor into the ecologic duck farm. We are most grateful to the transfer of EUR 300 to our duck farming account and we have now accumulated vaccine and plastic fencing for the enlargement of the grazing area. We thank you Mr. J. Thurdin for your trust and confidence in our duck farm, once again, thank you!

EUR 50 investment by Mr. D. Hirschler

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the investment of EUR 50 made by Mr. Daniel Hirschler from Cologne in Germany. His private incentive to invest in the duck farm has led to the purchase of 20 ducklings and food ration for 2 weeks. Splendid! Thank you very much!

sudden death

Last week I wrote that there was progress. Well, this week has been awful. The ducks caught a cold, I lost 40% of my livestock. What is there to write. I've been having the fire going night and day now for a week, it has been awful, simply awful. No pictures of this.
Finally, the antidote; garlic. I fed them garlic and the rampant behavior of the illness stopped. Now I've stabilized the situation and no more deaths. They are fighting the illness and some are really getting back to the alert and curious behavior of the Muscovy duck.
The forest farm has really developed and the ducks now have access to naturally flowing water. The pictures I've put on this post are on the transfer of the ducks from the duckling farm to the forest farm.

Cash is running low, since I have to re-invest the ducks I lost. It's tough and I'm really in need of an investor. I got one of my friends as a partner to invest, which is going to make this month turn around. For next month, that's written in the stars.

the forest farm

Wow, lately there has been a lot of progress. Yes, the ducks in the breeding farm is growing very well. We put three flocks together and they are now integrated, not fully, but nearly so.
The forest farm, well, we're clearing a forest from the dense vegetation so we may be able to keep a close eye on the ducks. It's going really well although we began the clearing two weeks delayed from schedule. But two weeks is not a problem really. Our flock is very large for the area we keep them at the moment, the move will really be something different for them and I wish with positive effects.
We've had some strange incidents with three ducks that have picked feathers and they have been cut slightly, very strange. I saw coagulated blood in these cuts and I separated these duck into 'sick bay'. They are eating and drinking as normal. They are recovering. I'm not sure if there is some kind of cannibalism going on or what. It'll show sooner or later. I need to spot the ducks that are hostile and cull them, that's all.
There are no traces of other animals that may have entered the duckling farm so I'm pretty sure that there is severe picking/cannibalism going on.

p h o t o s (IV)

Hi! I took these shots today and now we've transferred about 50 ducks from the first duckling farm, where we grow them in the very beginning of the broiling process. They're between 1-1,5 months on these pictures.
Weight is between 500 gr. to 1500 gr.
Enjoy the photos, and if you have questions please leave them directly under the comment section! :-)

p h o t o s (III)

My desk at the duckling farm.

p h o t o s (II)

The duckling farm. This is where I raise the ducklings until they're about 1,5 to 2 months old. Then they're transferred to the forest farm. Why the transfer? Well, food and drinks are free in the forest! And it provides the duckling farm with space for new arriving ducklings, so it's a rotation system. All-in all-out, we sanitize the duckling farm and it really makes the managing of the two farms far easier. Another feature is that the ducks in the forest can breed. I select the ones who are going to be sold and the ones who are being kept for breeding.

The forest is a natural habitat and it is possible to keep a close eye on the ducks. The newly hatched ducklings are transferred to the duckling farm to increase growth rate and keep mortality rate down.

p h o t o s

Here are some photos from the test farm I built on the rice field. It worked really great. The ducks were happy and healthy, grew quickly and developed flight feathers well.

i n c e n t i v e s (III)

OK, I'm typing away again. I want to write about the very first steps I took before buying the first ducks at the farm.
Initially I wanted to integrate the duck farm on the rice fields. The ducks eat insects without munching into the rice plants and they fertilize. When rainy season approached I prepared the rice fields to hold the ducks, fencing, fresh water and shelter. Turned out that our rice farmer neighbor, who never used pesticides, was now going to use them. This is not good for the ducks, they die, so I had to rethink. At this time I had 34 ducks ready to walk on the rice fields, and about 200 on the preparation farm. I'll return to explain about the preparation farm later.

I found a different property, thankfully this belongs to my fiancée. There is now a forest to my disposal, 2 Hectares (nearly 5 Acres) of forest, natural shade, access to clean water, open grass areas and insects. This area can be used for at least 1000 ducks, perhaps more. And there is more land that we can rent, with a low price tag, in the neighboring area. Another feature is that it's all isolated from people and traffic. Couldn't be better.
The only negative thing is that there is no electricity. I'm looking into getting a windmill that will generate electricity. With the windmill I will have to be able to store the charge with batteries. This can turn out quite expensive but it's better than a gasoline or diesel driven generator for electricity. Perhaps I can get more effect out of the gasoline engine, but the noise and the cost for gasoline and the maintenenace of it is way way too steep.
To make sense of the word and its definition; ecologic, I'd better stick to wind or solar power. Both solutions come out expensive, that's not too good.
Right now I'm sketching on the idea of building my own windmill, not buying one off the shelf, I think it will work out real good!

i n c e n t i v e s (II)

Picking up the keyboard where I left it last...
So, after careful evaluation I decided to move to Laos. I've been living here for the last four months. I love it.
It's very dynamic to say the least. Incredible poverty and the social classes, yes; there are Soviet flags hanging everywhere, so I may stick to the word of 'classes', are getting more and more apart. Super class vs. Extremely poor class. Day by day more and more beggars are showing up on the streets. Children, women with children, old women. These are people from the country side, East of the Mekong river living in the forests who sought a better future in the larger city of Savannakhet. Hmmm... it's going to get worse. Social welfare in the footprints of communism and workers' movements; never. Sink or swim.

After about a month of planning I decided to start investing. At first I wanted to start a chicken farm. Which later turned out, of various reasons which I will return to explain later on, to be a ecologic duck farm.
I don't regret it. Ducks are lovely animals and I had no prior knowledge in how to even start a duck farm, and less about how to run it. I read and studied as much material I could overcome in short time. And as of now I have over 300 ducks.
They are growing well, with various results of course, but I had several great components that made my incentive to be a future business that may change things within a short period of time. An overall objective I have is to be able to run a business so that I can survive here. The other objective is to find a sustainable solution to 'clean up' the ducks sold at local markets here in Savannakhet. Cleaner and healthier ducks will lead to a safer environment for the people who live here. So my work may have great impact in the future; in the very nearby future, I hope!

i n c e n t i v e s

Prior to my final decision to move to Laos I lived in Los Angeles. I worked as a IT-consultant. Business went down, crisis. So I made a drastic change and moved, not only from Los Angeles, but also away from my Scandinavian heritage, Swedish citizen as I am.
I've been studying music for a long time, since I was six. Kept going, scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston USA. My studies ended shortly after the WTC-attacks in 2001. Economy went down, I ran out of options and I went back home, home to safety and the 'totalities of social welfare'. Well, guess what, 'last communist outpost'; Sweden, I didn't exactly 'fall in love' with my new life. I went into depression. I kept on going for about a year sorting out a new life-direction. Which certainly didn't result the way I planned!

I landed, by coincidence at Malmö University; International Migration and Ethnic Relations. I studied, studied and studied. Theory, books and sterile lecturing finally made me give up. I made a last attempt to find my way through my studies by engaging in writing my combined bachelor's and master's thesis by doing a field study in Tajikistan - twice.
Well, field study turned out to be my thing really, writing and compiling it into an academically acceptable publication turned out to total failure. Which made me awfully sad.

Well, as my professor once said; "-Don't try to achieve what you can't achieve". Nice words, thoughtful of him. I'll keep that in mind and I will try not to achieve anything, since that is the motivation that most people in this world is continuously trying to combat day after day. Another human obsession, to be very provocative to say the least; is the human obsessive behavior in stepping on other people, abuse humanity to his/her personal lusts. I don't need to ask you as a reader to suck on those words too long, you probably think that I'm a pessimist and bitter over my past experiences and that all my i n c e n t i v e s are due to fail. Which is partly true. Any incentive fails. If it's the initial faith you had in creating a new business or any engagement where your focus was on contributing to a better world, you manage to fail those initial incentives due to your limitations and 'utopist' ideals where you could not withstand for more than 'a moment'. I believe this is a global problem.

Cutting to the chase. As a provocateur, which has lately become a developing obsession of mine, to stir and shake things up, makes readers and listeners rise eyebrows, perhaps rethink their past and do things slightly differently from how things 'always has been working'. My simplified analysis about rethinking how we live now and destruct the world for future generations must come closer to an end and a new self-conscious and reflexive behavior is to be promoted. The grand question, which we will eternally fail to answer; how do we change the destructive behavior of mankind. Which leads me back to my very clever professors' statement; "-Don't try to achieve what you can't achieve".