Trends of Exotic Chicken Dissemination in North Western Amhara, Ethiopia: Challenges and Opportunities

This study was conducted in Banja and Burie districts of northwestern Amhara, Ethiopia to investigate the dissemination trends, challenges and opportunities of exotic chickens. Banja and Burie districts and six Kebeles (three/district) were purposively selected. A total 180 respondents were selected by systematic and simple random sampling techniques for the survey and data was collected using semi structured questionnaire. Chi-square test was employed for ordinal and nominal data. Bovans-Brown, Bovans-White (commercial layers) and Potchefstroom Koekoek (dual purpose) breeds are the most distributed exotic chickens in the both study areas. The results revealed that the majorities (91.12%) of distributed exotic chickens were kept in traditional/backyard production system. Exotic chickens in both study areas were exposed for high mortality due traditional farmers’ management practice. Higher mortality of chicken was seriously affected the survival of these breeds and contribution of chickens to farmer households. The major causes for chick death survey study were NCD and predator. Egg productivity, fast growth, survival, disease resistance and egg hatchability with the overall index value of 0.27, 0.24, 0.09, 0.31and 0.10 were the first ranked traits, respectively. Supply of two and three months of pullet and cockerels rather than supplying day old chicks as an important option to enhance survival and growth of distributed chicks at farmer level. Due to lack of veterinary services and vaccine almost all exotic chicken owners have traditionally experienced to treat their sick chickens in both study areas. The productivity of disseminated exotic chicken was far below the possible expectations at smallholder farmer level in both study areas. The current result revealed that having a huge number of exotic chicken breed populations in the study areas generally in the region, but this situation was a paradox. The major challenges to chicken production in both study areas were disease, predator, poor extension services, feed shortage and house problem which need to be considered in development plan of the districts. Keywords: Challenges, Genotype, management system, mortalit