1000 chicken struck by a bolt of lightning
A Ntabazinduna farmer reportedly lost over 1000 chickens after a bolt of lightning struck the birds which were ready for the market, The Sunday News reports.
Narrating the incident that occurred last week on Tuesday, Ms Sidumisile Mathe of Mahaja village in Ntabazinduna said:
It all happened on Tuesday around 4pm, it began to rain heavily and I was with one of my helpers trying to secure the fowl run. We then left for the main house and that is when a bolt of lightning struck the fowl run, it was like a huge ball of fire. It was scary.
I immediately rushed back to the fowl run screaming for help, neighbours came through as they initially thought that maybe the lightning had struck while we were inside the fowl run because we would spend most of our time in the fowl run.
Ms. Mathe said she also lost equipment she uses to feed the chicken the unfortunate incident:
I invested US$2 500 for the construction of the fowl run and to date had used about US$1 000 for the feed, as I had purchased 70 bags of chicken feed. What pains me is that I lost these chickens when I had already got a market for them, actually they were now three days from reaching the required six weeks maturity, I was supposed to be delivering them on (last) Friday
The area’s councilor spoke to the publication and said the incident was very unfortunate and said another family lost their chickens too because of the heavy rains experienced in the area.
Most people were looking up to her, as she was very passionate about this project. For her sweat to be rewarded like this is very painful to say the least. While we really appreciate the rains, our community was hard hit by their violent nature, I was made aware of another family that lost 150 chickens but theirs was because their fowl run was destroyed by the heavy rain which resulted in the roof collapsing on the chickens,
The Ntabazinduna incident came a few short days after the Meteorology Services Department (MSD) warned of heavy rains in the region last week.
In a similar incident that occurred in Chiredzi a few days ago, 5 people were struck by lightning as they were going to work.
–The Sunday News
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