An investigation of the major causes of chicken mortality and intervention measures under village chicken production system

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.