Local chickens in East African region: their production and potential

Abstract

Indigenous chickens ( IC ) contribute socioeconomically to household food security in the region of East Africa. However, their potential and improvement are not well documented. This review is aimed at exploring the production and potential of indigenous chickens in East Africa. The various tools for literature search such as google search and Google scholars, agricultural journals, animal sciences and health journals, poultry related journals, and country online databases were used to gather information. IC were primarily reared by women and were kept predominantly under scavenging systems where the conditions of management (feeding, housing, and health care) are poor. They presented a high variation in their reproduction and production characteristics. The products (meat and eggs) were of good quality and preferred by the local consumers. Despite the variation and potential of IC, improvements in the village system were constrained by diseases and loss due to Newcastle, Gumboro, and Ecto-endo parasites and predators. Farmers primarily used traditional methods to control the diseases, and some used conventional medications and vaccines. Due to the potential of IC, the exploration of various strategies for improvement supported by the details of their genetic variability and adaptation as well as different management conditions was a goal of this review.

The Role of Household-Scale Local Chicken Farms in Providing Family Food in Minahasa Regency

“…The breeder provides all the feed needs both in quantity and quality to meet the nutritional needs of native chickens [7]. [6] explained that local chickens, like other livestock, also need energy, protein, vitamins, minerals in their maintenance for production and primary living purposes, so farmers must understand the nutritional needs in the feed that chickens will consume by chickens. The habit of local chickens scavenging for food during the day allows their bodies to adapt to environmental conditions.…”

“…Efforts to overcome these problems can be made with a cooperative approach so that farmers must prioritize the production of superior commodities in their area [4]. The small scale of local chicken business with ownership of not more than 30 heads with traditional maintenance [4] [5] makes it very easy for farmers to continue to maintain their business by involving family members, as in the report of Dana et al (2010) in [6] that women and children in tropical countries with small farms turn to local chickens as a source of investment. As a form of livelihood development in rural areas, local chickens play an important role in households in the suburbs and cities.…”

“…Various inhibiting factors such as the use of breeds, chickens are not caged, incubating equipment is still elementary, the price of feed, the location of maintenance that makes farmers desperate [7], local chickens can at least be a source of income and savings for farmer-breeder families [8], being a source of protein and high nutrition [9] as evidenced by the level of Indonesian people's consumption of local chicken-based food products in 2017-2021, consumption outside the household tends to increase by 9.93% per year [10] while for families it tends to decrease. Alders and Pym (2009) and Simainga et al (2010,2011) in [6] reported that in Mozambique and Zambia, local chicken became a nutritious food for people with HIV as an alternative food when their income decreased. This paper aims to explore the role of household-scale local chicken farms in providing family food in Minahasa Regency, North Sulawesi, and identify any factors that hinder the development of the household-scale local chicken business.…”

Genetic Comparisons of Body Weight, Average Daily Gain, and Breast Circumference between Slow-Growing Thai Native Chickens (Pradu Hang dum) Raised On-Site Farm and On-Station

“…Native chickens are vitally important livestock at the community level and represent food security and a source of savings, especially in developing countries [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The main advantages of native chickens are that they are easy to raise and well adapted to local conditions, especially to the use of local feed source, and have an excellent ability to resist disease and poor weather compared to exotic chicken breeds [ 5 , 6 ].…”

Immunogenetics and genetic variations in indigenous chicken in the tropics using SNP data

“…Indigenous Chicken farming has been gradually shifting from subsistence to commercial chicken farming due to increased demand for IC meat and eggs (Magothe et al, 2019) [25] . The increase in IC demand makes farmers house birds in large flocks at high stocking density thus the increased risk of diseases, and disease spreading (Mujyambere et al, 2022) [26] . Newcastle disease is one of the common diseases affecting IC farming (Kapczynski et al, 2013;Walugembe et al, 2019) [20,43] .…”