When refugees from Somalia and other African nations began volunteering at a farm west of the Salt Lake City International Airport, they were reclaiming a piece of the lives they left behind.
At Utah Refugee Goats, raising goats — and, later, chickens — gave the volunteers not only a path to self-sufficiency in a new country, but also a sense of purpose and community, said Joseph Okoh, an assistant professor of small-acreage livestock at Utah State University.
“There is this kind of healing that is also attached to keeping livestock,” Okoh said. “Most of them come from areas that are war torn, and they have seen a lot, so when they go into animal agriculture, it gives them this healing that, ‘Hey, I am attached to this animal, and they are doing well.’”
That work was partially disrupted when avian influenza, or bird flu, wiped out the farm’s flock of chickens shortly after the nonprofit farm had expanded into poultry, Okoh said.
Last year, Okoh, along with Chad Page, a sheep and goat specialist in USU’s Department of Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences, began training refugees at the 80-acre farm on how to raise and care for chickens, with a focus on biosecurity to prevent a future outbreak.
Because of language barriers, Okoh said, much of the instruction is done in person at the farm through visual demonstrations or videos.
“The last time we had our training, we were showing them videos on biosecurity,” he said. “What you need to know, how you take your livestock production seriously in terms of restricting visitors, washing your pen regularly and all that.”
The farm also needed improved coops to keep chickens safe from wildlife, Okoh said. To address that, he and Page secured a $20,000 grant from the Vilcek Foundation, a New York City–based nonprofit that highlights immigrant contributions in the U.S., to fund training and coop upgrades.
The goal, Page said, is to help the refugees become “self-sustaining” poultry farmers.
“Right now, they’re nowhere near the point of producing enough goats or producing enough chickens to take care of the need of their community,” Page said. “So the hope is that through training, and now an investment in their infrastructure, that they can be a little bit closer.”
The farm started in 2013 as the East African Refugee Goat Project, founded by Somali Bantu, Burundian, and Somali Bajuni community leaders to provide affordable halal goat meat to Utah’s refugee communities.
The International Rescue Committee, one of the state’s two main refugee resettlement agencies, served as the umbrella nonprofit organization until 2021, when the three refugee communities took over ownership and renamed it Utah Refugee Goats.
That’s also when those communities started raising chickens, but they needed help learning how to care for them.
Many African refugees arrive in the U.S. with extensive agricultural experience, Okoh said, but without access to land and resources, that expertise often goes untapped.
For many, the cold winters are another obstacle, he said, as they are not accustomed to raising livestock in freezing temperatures. The training Okoh and Page provide equips them with the skills needed to manage goats and chickens in the unfamiliar climate.
While most of the refugees they serve are from East Africa, Okoh noted, participants hail from across the continent and most are women and children.
Northern Utah refugee communities have expressed interest in the program, he said, and he hopes to eventually expand to a farm in Logan.
Okoh said the program is a way for the refugees to “own something” and feel they are giving back.
“The idea is that this program is for us,” he said, referring to the refugees. “The farm is ours. We can contribute to the economy. We can learn something.”