One thousand one hundred and fifty-two dual-purpose improved chickens (576 Kuroiler and 576 Sasso) of mixed sexes were reared in two diverse agro-ecological zones, i.e., highland and lowland in ...Mvomero district, Eastern Tanzania, to determine the effects of agro-ecological zones on growth performance, egg production, and survivability under farmer management conditions. Two villages per zone were purposively selected, and from each village, 16 farmers were included in the study; a particular farmer received 18 birds of mixed sexes of the same breed. Data on body weight, egg production trait, and mortality were taken at different ages from week 6 up to 52. General Linear Models fitting breed, agro-ecological zone, and interactions between breed and zone were used to analyze the data. Results show that breed had no significant effects on body weight and body weight gain. However, the effects of the agro-ecological zone and interaction between breed and zone on body weight and body weight gain were significant at the 16th and 20th week of age. The highland zone had heavier chickens than the lowland. While Sasso performed better than Kuroiler chickens in the highland zone, the opposite was observed in the lowland. Significant breed × agro-ecology interactions were observed only for age at first egg whereby Sasso matured earlier than Kuroiler in the highland zone but much later than Kuroiler in the lowland. Birds raised in the highland zone survived better than those chickens in the lowland during both growing and laying periods. Thus, knowledge of breed performance in relation to agro-ecological differences is critical when distributing improved chicken breeds to farmers.
The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of breed, diet, and level of feed supplementation on growth performance, feed conversion ratio, and survivability of Sasso and Kuroiler chicken. ...The study was conducted in two separate phases, i.e., the starter phase (0–6 weeks of age) and grower phase (6–20 weeks of age). One thousand sixty–day-old Sasso and Kuroiler chicks were raised until 6 weeks under intensive management system with three dietary treatments. At the age of 6 weeks, a total of 960 birds (480 Sasso and 480 Kuroiler) were randomly selected from each treatment diet and assigned to four feed supplementation levels, i.e., 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% with two replicates each having 20 birds. Beginning week 7, birds were allowed to semi-scavenge from 6:00 am in the morning to 6:00 pm in the evening with free access to open grass area of 1 bird/4 m
2
. Grower rations based on the three categories, i.e., commercial, medium-cost, and low-cost formulation, were fed from 7th to the 20th week of age. During 0 to 6 weeks of the growing phase, the breed and diet significantly (
p
< 0.05) influenced 6-week live weight, live weight gain, and feed conversion ratio. Birds given commercial diet (D1) excelled in live weight, total live weight gains, and feed conversion ratio followed by medium-cost (D2) and low-cost (D3) diet respectively. During the 7th to 20th weeks of the growing phase, the breed, diet, and supplementation levels had a significant influence (
p
< 0.05) on the live weight and weight gain at 20 weeks of age. Feed cost per kilogram gain increased with an increase in the level of supplementation. Days taken by birds to reach market weight (2 kg) with 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% level of dietary supplementation were 16, 18, 20, and more than 20 weeks respectively. The survival rate for Sasso and Kuroiler was 99.80% and 97.13% respectively. It is concluded that appreciable growth performance can be attained for semi-scavenging Sasso and Kuroiler chickens when supplemented with medium- or low-cost diets at the level of 50 to 75% of their daily feed requirements.
Increasing poultry product consumption trends have attracted researchers and development practitioners to look for interventions that transform the low-input low-output-based village chicken ...production to a high yielding production system. However, due to the intricate nature of the production system, there is a dearth of evidence that helps design comprehensive interventions at the smallholder level. Using national-level representative data collected from 3555 village chicken producers in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, this study examines the technical efficiency of village chicken production and investigates the main factors that explain the level of inefficiency. We applied a stochastic frontier analysis to simultaneously quantify the level of technical efficiency and identify factors associated with heterogeneity in inefficiency. We found that the level of technical efficiency is extremely low in the three countries, suggesting enormous opportunities to enhance productivity using available resources. The heterogeneity in technical efficiency is strongly associated with producers’ experience in breed improvements and flock management, limited technical knowledge and skills, limited access to institutions and markets, smaller flock size, gender disparities, and household livelihood orientation. We argue the need to adopt an integrated approach to enhance village producers’ productivity and transform the traditional subsistence-based production system into a commercially oriented semi-intensive production system.
The objective of the present study was to evaluate the digestibility of
Albizia harveyi (AH),
Delonix elata (DE) and
Grewia similis (GS) dried leaves and the effect of feeding the leaf meals on the ...performance of goats fed low quality hay. The four treatments consisted of the three browse species combined with
Cenchrus ciliaris (CC) hay and a control with concentrate + CC hay or pure CC hay. Data from twelve bucks in the digestibility experiment and twelve does with single kids in the production experiment were analyzed. All the browse species had high crude protein contents (17–20.4%) and low content of neutral detergent fibre (31.3–60.7%) and acid detergent fibre (17.9–34.7%). AH had the highest fibre content of the browses but lower than that of grass hay. Results indicate that irrespective of the higher concentration of phenolic compounds, DE leaves were better digested than leaves from AH and GS. Supplementation of low quality hay with GS leaves and concentrate increased total DM and nutrient intake but reduced DM intake of the basal diet. Does fed with GS leaves had significantly higher milk yield and kid weight gains. The poor performance of the DE supplemented goats could be associated with the presence of the relatively high levels of total soluble and soluble condensed tannins in the leaves, whereas in the case of AH, leaf dust and hair could have lowered leaf intake.
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