ISSN 2375-0863
African Journal of Poultry Farming ISSN 2375-0863 Vol. 4 (3), pp. 130-136, March, 2016. Available online at www.internationalscholarsjournals.org © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research Paper
An investigation of the major causes of chicken mortality and intervention measures under village chicken production system
Tirunesh Y. E.1* and A. K. Gerima2
1College of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture, P. O. Box 34, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
2National Livestock Consultant, FAOET DRRU, Awash Field Office, Awash, Ethiopia.
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 16 February, 2016
Abstract
The research was conducted in Ada’a district of the Eastern Shoa Zone, Ethiopia. This study was undertaken to investigate the major causes of chicken mortality under village production system and the intervention measures by farmers against the major causes of chicken mortality under village conditions. Data were collected through structured questionnaire from 180 households. Simple random sampling method was used to select the peasant associations and the households. The majority of the respondents put predation (91.9%) and disease (86.4%) as major causes of mortality in chicken older than 7 days. More than half of hatched chicks are lost due to mismanagement (29.4%), predation (67.8%) and other causes were also mentioned by less than 10% of the respondents. Significant proportion of the respondents (48.3%) did not provide modern medicine and those using, utilize mainly broad spectrum medicines without consulting veterinarians. The traditional medicaments included different medicinal plant species. As a conclusion, chicken in the study areas are highly affected by mortality due to predation and diseases. Appropriate management should be taken, therefore, to control the incidence of disease and reduce the loss of chicken kept under village chicken production systems due to predation and mismanagement.
Key words: Chicken, disease, loss, mismanagement, predation, village.