Assessement on Husbandry Practices and Production Performance of Briolers under Smallholder Management in and Arround Debre Zeit Town, Ethiopia
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2008-06
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Abstract
The study has two parts. The first parts covers cross sectional study while the second part dealt with longitudinal investigation and conducted on private smallholder broiler farms having a flock size of 50-700 in Debre Zeit town, Ethiopia. Cross-sectional study was designed to gather information on the baseline poultry husbandry practices, while longitudinal study was designed to collect data on production performances and mortality of broiler chicks. A total of 65 broiler farms existed in the study area and all were considered for cross sectional study, while a follow up longitudinal study was conducted on 17 purposively selected broiler farms.
The household demographic profile showed that the age of most households lies within 31-40 years followed by 21-30, and most of the farmers were literate. The dominant farming system was raising livestock only. The study showed that 58.5% of the households were farmers, and 58.5% were females. All the surveyed households reared broilers chicken for sales as an income source, and 46.2% produce broilers 3 times per year. The average (mean ± SD) family size, flock size and flock density was 4.2±1.58, 386.87 ± 177.63 and 10.21 ± 2.18, respectively. About 93.8% of the households use separate housing for broiler, and the percentage of farms making house from mud was 50.8%. Most of the farms use flatted roofing (89.2%) and one sided openings (93.8%). With regard to health management, about 80% of the farms use vaccination only and the rest combine it with other medicaments. This study showed that Sodium hypochlorite account for the largest type’s disinfectants chemical used in the farming system. The higher and lower mortality rate occurred at finisher and grower stage respectively. While 58.5% of the labor source was family labor, the remaining was accounted for hired labor. The most important constraints of the broiler farms were shortage of land (64.6%), day old chicks (83.1%), capital (44.6%), feed related problems (63%) and while labor was less important (4.6%).
The overall mean age at slaughtering, slaughtering weight, carcass weight, dressing percentage (%) and mortality rate (%) were 56.535.99 days, 2.640.17 kg, 1.840.17 kg, 69.92.71 % and 6.731.78 %, respectively. Commercial Feed Based (CFB) broilers
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farms had age at slaughtering of 53.18±1.14 days, and slaughtering weight of males and females broilers were 2.74±0.13 kg and 2.49±0.12 kg, respectively, while carcass weight of male and female broilers were 1.97±0.10 and 1.69±0.12, respectively. On the other hand, On Farm Feed Based (OFFB) broiler farms had age at slaughtering of 62.67±6.40 days, and slaughtering weight of male and female broilers were 2.78±0.15 kg and 2.57±0.11 kg, respectively, while carcass weight of male and female broilers were 2±0.12 kg and 1.74±0.92 kg, respectively. Feed type and sex of birds had significant effect on the slaughtering and carcass weight and dressing percentages across all the farms. The male broiler chicks had heavier carcass compared to the female ones. Smallholder broiler farms that used CFB ration perform better compared to the OFFB ration. Even if the productive performance of broiler chicken owned by smallholder in the area is improving, the prevailing situations such as shortage of skill, feed problems and health care practices is still the bottleneck for better performance. Thus, broiler farms should improve the prevailing management standard through improved husbandry practices; supply of quality feed and improved health care of birds.
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broiler, husbandry, production performance, smallholder