Attitude of farmers towards hay box brooder and on station evaluation using broiler chicks at jimma

Abstract

Field surveywas conducted to assess the attitude of farmers towards the hay- box brooding technology and and on-station trial were conducted to evaluate the brooding performance of the technology in and in the vicinity of Jimma (JUCAVM). The farmers who received the hay-box chick brooders were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 270 Cobb500 broiler chicks were used to evaluate the brooding performance of the existing and modified hay-box brooders of 30 chick’s capacity, replicated in completely randomized design using electric brooders as positive treatments. Carcass yield and weight of internal organs were determined by slaughtering 6 chicks randomly taken from each treatment and a dressing percentage of 78.1, 76.21 and 73.44% was recorded from T1,T2and T3 respectively. Finally all the data collected were subjected to statistical analysis. About 98% of the respondents have said the hay-box chick brooder is very easy for construction and management. The respondents reported to have attained mean survival rate of 30-59% and 76 -90% to an age of 8 weeks and 4 weeks with the use of natural brooding and hay box brooder respectively. All the respondents (100%) reported to have a very strong interest in adopting the hay-box technology in their locality with some modifications. The results of the on-station trial, showed that there was no significance difference (p>0.05) between the treatment groups assigned to electric and modified hay box brooder in mean daily body weight gain, feed consumption and mortality (2.2%)) to an age of 56 days; whereas the treatment groups assigned to the existing hay box brooder had significantly (P<0.05) lower daily gain and survival rate (54%) than the others to an age of 56 days. The treatment groups assigned to the electric and modified hay box brooders attained body weight of 2.3 and 2.1kg/head respectively at an age of 56 days with survival rate of 98%.The internal organs weight data on the carcass evaluation shows that there is no significance difference (p>0.05 )between all the treatment groups except liver, bursa of fabricius and Adrenal gland. About Birr 74 and 71 was invested to raise day old broiler chicks to an age of 56 days with the use of electric and modified hay box brooder resulting in net profit of Birr 51/head and birr 37/head respectively indicating that electric and modified hay box brooder could safely and economically be used to raise broilers as business at urban and rural household level in Ethiopia respectively. Refining the constructional design and specifications of the technology seems to be the future direction of research.