Diseases have recently become one of the biggest threats to almost all households engaged in animal husbandry for the reason that diseases exert negative impacts on not only people's life but also the development of animal husbandry sector. Several months ago, Vinh Phu Commune of Phu Ninh District saw prevalent mouth and foot diseases on livestocks. We were caught by surprise to see healthy livestocks when we visited one household in the commune. The owner of those livetocks is Hoang Thi Tinh aged 54 in Vinh Phu Commune, Phu Ninh District, Phu Tho Province.

Tinh held, "I am keen on animal breeding. When I was young, I was one of the best animal breeders in the village. When the project on participatory land use and management is implemented, I registered to become a member of the pig breeding interest group. To me, joining the group is quite useful to consolidate relationship among village people and share experience in breeding animals. I have experience in breeding sows for 10 years. However, my sow got mouth and foot disease when it was pregnant, which made it difficult for her to move around. At the mean time, sows of other households were massively dead making me quite nervous. Thanks to knowledge gained from training courses provided for interest groups, I applied lemons, star fruits and herbal plant on sow' wounds and repeated it everyday. Then I realized the sow's skin and foot recover quickly. One week later, the sow could move more easily. 15 days later, the sow gave birth to 12 healthy piggies. Nevertheless, after several days, two piggies were dead, which could not be explained. Only after participating in the training course on caring piggy could I learn that because I did not tight the navel of piggies, they lost a lot of blood causing death. If only I had participated the training course sooner, my piggies would not have been dead. If only village people participated more in the interest groups, loss and failure in animal husbandry could be reduced.

We left Tinh's house at noon. The piggies were then feeding. We all felt hungry but happy as the project's activities have initially brought about practical and sustainable benefits to local people in the project site.