Characterization of Urban Poultry Production System in Northern Gondar, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

The study was conducted in Northern Gondar to characterize the village chicken production system under urban condition. A cross sectional type of studies were conducted to collect data from November 2010 to April 2011 using questionnaire survey and a simple random sampling techniques, 100 households were included in the survey. The main production objectives of chicken were income generation, household consumption and replacement of the flock. And most of the activities in chicken rearing were carried out by women. The average flock size was 10.44 chickens with a range of 2-18 birds. Most of the birds rested at night in a separated confined chicken house. Chickens in the study area were getting their major feed resources through scavenging with little supplementary feed provision. The major causes of losses of chicken in the study area were disease (47%), predation (22%) and mismanagement (31%). According to respondents, the common signs of disease frequently occurred in their flock were watery and yellowish diarrhoea, closing of eyes, head hangs down, high level of morbidity, depression, droppings of wings, sneezing or coughing, nasal discharge, twisting of head and neck, loss of appetite and mass death. The average number of eggs laid by local hen was 11.53eggs/hen/clutch and the hatchability percentage observed in this study was 87.29 %, which ranged from 57.1%-100%. The most important constraints of poultry production in the study villages were disease (1 st ), predators (2 nd ), shortage of supplementary feeds (3 rd ), poultry housing problem (4 th ) and lack of veterinary health services (5 th