Frogs and Iguanas...a tasty treat

Last month I visited a community development project just outside the city of Udon Thani. A member of a church in Udon oversees this project. It is a training sight for sustainable livelihood projects and brings in groups from all over the northeast to learn how to use their land and a small amount of resources to grow food and raise animals to meet their own living needs and also to sell in their local communities.

There were many things going on at this farm, located in a rural community. They were raising catfish in small round concrete containers with a radius of less than 1 meter, about 100 per container. They also had larger concrete vats and small beds that were dug in the ground to show different ways to raise catfish, depending on the area available and the amount that is going to be raised.

They also raised pigs, to both create natural fertilizer that can be sold in the market, as well as to sell when the pigs grow large. A small pig can be purchased for about 1000 baht ($30) and then sold by the kg when he is older. The fertilizer is sold as it is made. There were two different pens for these pigs, one was basically mud, and the pigs laid on top of the mud and that could eventually be used for fertilizer. Another, far cleaner pen, was raised off the ground and contained straw and other, less muddy substances, this kind of pen is more useful when the dirt is too hard for the pigs to really burrow into. So, both of these ways of raising pigs was modeled.

There were Iguanas being raised, which I was a bit surprised to find are quite a tasty delicacy here in the Northeast, so they are sold in the market for food. They were raised in one large cage, about 40 of them (although I only saw 3-4) with a few large bushes in the cage for them to play and hide in. As we explored the various projects, we found a few stray iguanas who had apparently left their pens to find new friends.

They also raised frogs, huge frogs who can deliver 4000 baby frogs, we’re talking about amazing female frogs! These baby frogs can be sold for 1 baht each in the market, so in a female frog’s reproductive life, she can produce about 4000 baht worth of little frogs, or over $125.

It was great to be exposed to these various, simple projects, which the Thais I was with assured me could be easily done by individual families. We left encouraged that my coworker’s father in another province could raise catfish, and maybe a couple of pigs. A local pastor was also with us and began to talk about raising catfish behind the small church property, which is also his home, in order to raise money for himself and also teach these skills to his church members.