On farm feeding interventions for higher performance and profitability of local chickens in Babati district, Tanzania.

Thesis

Local chickens contribute about 56% of products from chickens produced in Tanzania. As the poultry industry grows, it is important to focus on improving their productivity to meet the increasing market demand of meat and eggs. This study was conducted aiming at developing feeding strategies that would help to increase the overall productivity of local chickens and their financial returns to farmers. The study was conducted in four villages of Matufa, Seloto, Galapo and Sabilo in four wards of Magugu, Dareda, Galapo, and Dabil respectively. The villages are located within the elevations of 1004-1803 meters above sea level. Majority of the households within the four villages practice mixed farming. The major crops grown are maize, sorghum, paddy, lablab, soybean, pigeon pea, sesame, sunflower and vegetables, while livestock kept are cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and poultry. A cross-sectional study was conducted aiming at assessing the productivity and management of local chickens in the four villages. The study involved 140 households for the individual interviews and four focused group discussions (one in each village) with an average of 18 farmers per group. The questionnaire and checklist were designed to collect information on rural chicken production status, chicken population structure, breeds/strains, feeding, housing, health management, mortality and labour distribution on chicken management within the households. The collected data were analysed using SPSS Statistics 21.0 program. The findings showed that 96.5% of the respondents in the study area kept local chickens with an average of 17 chickens per household. Most of the village households (53%) kept their chickens under a scavenging system with irregular supplementation. Other systems were semi-scavenging (44%) and full confinement (3%). The mean eggs per clutch and number of clutches/hen/year in the study area were 12.9 eggs and 3.5 respectively with an average of 45 eggs per hen per year. Only 17.1% of the respondents kept their chickens in the chicken-shelters at night while 60.8% and 22.1% of respondents kept their chickens in family houses and kitchen respectively. Labour for chicken management was provided by the family members, either by men, women or children depending on the nature of the activity. However, most of the routine management activities were done by women and girls while men and boys played a major role in poultry house construction and marketing of chickens at distant markets. Following the survey, an on-farm experiment to evaluate the effect of feeding system was carried out in the three villages of Matufa, Seloto and Galapo in Magugu, Dareda and Galapo wards, respectively. A total of 45 farmers were purposively selected from the above villages for feeding system evaluation. The feeding systems evaluated were compounded feed with full time confinement (T1), compounded feed, with semi- scavenging (T2) and scavenging only (T3). The treatments were replicated 15 times, each village having five replications and each replication being held by an individual farmer. Thus, the experimental unit was a farmer with an average of 34 chickens. A total of 1550 chickens (520 males and 1030 females) were used to assess production and profitability parameters during the growth to maturity while 607 hens were used for egg production assessments. Data on growth and mortality rates were collected from the 6 th to 20 th week of age while laying intensity was recorded for 24 consecutive weeks commencing at the 22 nd week. The Lsmeans on body weight gains were 938.79 ± 18.79g, 815.70 ± 17.20g and 738.98 ± 13.50g for T1, T2 and T3 respectively. Chickens under T1 had significantly (P<0.05) higher body weight gains and final body weights than those under T2 and T3. Male chickens expressed significantly (P<0.05) higher growth rate (4.71 ± 0.07g/d/h) and final body weight (1146.95 ± 16.05g) than female chickens (3.77±0.06g and 963.05 ±11.33g respectively) The mean egg production intensity per flock was 30.75 ± 0.50%, 30.25 ± 0.55% and 24.16 ± 0.66% for chickens under T1, T2 and T3 respectively. Overall, T1 led to significantly (P<0.05) higher growth rate and survival rates. However, both growth and egg production were affected by locations whereas, T1 led to significantly (P<0.05) higher performance in egg production at low and medium altitudes than at high altitude when compared to T2. T2 led to significantly (P<0.05) higher performance in growth at low altitude than it did at high altitude when compared to T3. Assuming that all birds were sold for meat, the results for the profitability was 0.74 for the chickens under T3 being significantly (P<0.05) higher by 0.19 and 0.49 for T2 and T1 respectively. As the confinement intensity increased, the feed costs increased as well, resulting in a higher cost per unit gain of meat. Overall, the chickens in T2 gave significantly (P<0.05) higher profitability (0.50) and gross margin of 1621.33 TZS while T1 resulted in the lowest profitability (0.25) and gross margin of 705.47 TZS in egg production. This study concludes that the free-ranging with supplementation of compounded feeds has the potential to increase both growth and egg production of local chickens in rural areas. Moreover, full-time confinement with compounded feeds improved the growth rate and survival rate and is therefore, more appropriate intervention for chicks up to the 10 th week of age. The profitability of 0.74 in T3 implies that local chickens are highly profitable if innovative adoptions, such as regular watering, vaccination, medication, and proper feeding at the early stage of their growth are taken into account. Thus, the study recommends T1 for the first 10 weeks of growth as it supports high survival rate, and there after, followed by either T3 for the chickens raised for selling as live birds for meat or T2 for both eggs and meat purposes

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the African Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program as part of the US Government’s Feed the Future Initiative. I also acknowledge various contributions by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA),