29 Jun 2020

Former beauty queen, Ms Magdeline Blackie (27) of Malatswae in Central District believes her poultry business will be a success story.

The P25 000 she pocketed after being crowned first princess in the Miss RADP national pageant of 2013 gave birth to a broiler production business.

Since 2018,  her business had been afloat and she was optimistic of a good future.  

In an interview, Ms Blackie who participated in beauty pageants while a pupil at Motsumi Junior Secondary School in Letlhakane, said she participated in the Miss

RADP pageant to represent the rural populace  and prove to the society that there was potential in rural areas.

However, Ms Blackie  said she  never imagined that it would positively work for her.

She said the pageant taught her that she could be a role model.  

Ms Blackie  said being the first princess in the Miss RADP pageant and being crowned Miss CDC gave her an opportunity to realise her potential and taught her to take  independent decisions.

She said she took her time to make a decision on the project she should venture into.

She said though she got advice from different people about other projects, she stuck to broiler production business because she knew what she wanted.

“I ended up settling for broiler production business because I knew that raising chickens was relatively easy”, she said.

Ms Blackie, said she bought day old chicks and slaughtered them after six weeks.

“On arrival at the poultry farm, the chicks are placed in the disinfected chick house”, she said.

She would give them stress pack because they would be stressed when they arrived.

She said she has leant that one should always make sure that the chickens have water.

Ms Blackie  ssaid when she started her business, she stocked 300 chicks, but some of them died and she ended up slaughtering around 230 chickens because she was new in the industry and did not know the challenges of broiler production.

Nonetheless, she admitted that it was easy to raise chickens, but marketing and sale as well as making profit was a challenge.

She said when she started her broiler business, she thought that it was going to be easy for her to sell to Malatswae Primary School because she was the only person who had a broiler production business in the village.

At the moment, she said, she competed with other suppliers from Serowe and it always took time for her slaughtered chickens to be sold out.

Unlike some people who abandoned their projects due to the challenges, Ms Blackie used her business as a step to building thefuture.

She advised young people to follow in her footsteps and work hard to turn their dreams into reality.

She said she was responsible for the day to day running of her business and hope that one day she would be able to hire some of the youth in the village. ENDS