Challenges facing chicken production in Katulani district, Kitui County

Abstract

The poultry industry in Kenya is a key contributor to the local economy as well as food security and income with over 90% of households owning a flock of chicken (Kingori et al., 2010). The main objective of this study was to investigate the challenges faced b y rural and peri urban chicken farmers in Katulani District, Kitui County. The study focussed on understanding the challenges affecting chicken farming, factors affecting technology adoption, access to institutional support services, and choice of chicken heal th management strategies, flock structure and dynamics, in order to devise innovative approaches for promoting chicken industry in the study area. Data were collected through questionnaires, personal observations, photography and interviews on flock size, flock species and purpose, access to credit facilities and trainings. For this study, simple random sampling technique was used to select the respondents and data collected was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. Over 80% of households kept indigenous chicken under free range using family labour, which were mainly reared for income and subsistence. House hold size had influence on flock size with large households keeping larger flocks. There were more female headed households (59 .1% ) keeping chicken in the study area as compared to the males (40.1% ) . However, male headed households kept larger flock sizes in both study sites. Education levels had influence on flock size with peri urban areas having higher education levels (average of 10 years studying) and flock sizes compared to the rural households (average of 8 years studying). There were high levels of unemployment in both areas with those who were employed having higher flock sizes. Employment had a significant positive correlation ( p <0.05, r=0.643) on purchasing power which was the main method of initial poultry acquisition. Approximately 84.5% of respondents earned their livelihood from mixed farming as compared to crop farming or livestock keeping in isolation with the empl oyed ha ving higher monthly incomes than from any farm related activities. Chicken contribute about 4.18% and 26.8% of total Tropical livestock U nits in rural and peri urban sites respec tively with chicken, hens and pullets dominating the flock structure since they are mainly retained for production purposes. The cock to hen ratio was 1:2, i.e. one cock for every two hens. The main opportunities for chicken rearing in the study area were availability of land, water and labour while the main challenges w ere diseases, predators, and limited poultry production skills and high cost of drugs/vaccines. There were low adoption of all chicken rearing technologies in both rural and peri urban areas; while the latter had higher technology adoption rates. Most of the farmer s reported disease incidences in their farms especially Newcastle (NCD) and coccidiosis. About 98.6% and 90% of rural and peri urban respondents applied medicines to manage these diseases with ru ral farmers mostly using traditional medicinal products (80%) and peri urban farmers mostly using conventional medicines (58%). The main traditional medicinal products used were Aloe v era , neem tree, pepper and goat milk. Healing ability, availability of drugs, culture and cost of drugs were the main factors guiding the choice of drugs used by farmers. Therefore , a chicken disease control programme specific to the area which is lacking should be put in place. Also a review of extension models according to farmers needs should be put in place. Chicken farmers should b e encouraged to form farmer groups for ease of accessing various types of services and bargaining power. Since ethno veterinary medicine and practice is widespread in this community, there is a need to improve veterinary services by integrating modern medicine with some of the used ethno veterinary medicine subject to validation