Abstract
Assessment of the prevailing chicken egg storage materials and length at the rural household in different Agro ecological zone of Eastern Ethiopia were conducted to assess the existing local egg storage facilities and length under the rural farmers. From two zone representing Eastern Ethiopia and the lowland, midland and highland altitude, proportionally 10 districts of 30 rural kebeles were selected using probability proportional to sample size. From each selected rural kebeles, ten farmers were purposely selected. A total of 300 chicken owner were interviewed by structured questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS software. The majority of the respondents (98%) in Eastern Ethiopia stored eggs for both marketing and incubation in lowland (86.4%), midland (69.3%) and highland (91.2%) using plastic (28.8%), basket (28.4% and (34.1%) followed by basket (25.4%), pot made of clay/ cow dung (23.9% and 23.8%) along with coffee hulls and dried grass as bedding materials respectively. Mostly, eggs produced at home was used for incubation in lowland (75.9%), midland (76.9%) and highland (73.9%); not experienced for home consumption except for household of better economic status and at the festivity in a year, and to some extent purchased eggs from known neighbor where their qualities were evaluated by shaking and sun candling in lowland (53.8%) and midland (46.7%) and sun candling in highland (51.4%). Hatching eggs were stored more than a week in mid (43.1%) and highland (44%) and about a week in lowlands (48.2%) until the required number of egg was produced for incubation by broody hen. Most of the respondents (78%) were select incubating eggs based on size in lowland (44.9%) and color and size in mid (45.7%) and highland (54.4) preferably large size and white eggs. The common hatching materials used in the area was pot in lowland (61.1%), mid (40%) and highland (53%). Due to suitable weather condition, better hatchability, less disease and parasite infestation and better feed resource availability, most of the respondent (70%) performed incubation during the dry season. Generally, rural poultry producer used different egg storage and hatching materials for different duration, they may influence the quality of eggs for uses that require further investigation to evaluate and recommend the best methods of storage material and duration across different agro ecology and provision of successful training for rural poultry producer; women, on modern egg storage and incubation for improvement of poultry production.
Highlights
The world poultry population has been estimated to be about 16.2 billion, with 71.6% in developing countries, producing 67,718,544 metric tons of chicken meat and 57,861,747 metric tons of hen eggs [1]
The result of this study revealed that, the majority of the respondents (98%) were stored eggs in Eastern Ethiopia
The primary purpose of rearing poultry were for sale of both eggs and live chicken (67%) to generate income for food and educational expense especially in lowland agro ecology (75%) due to the unsuitable climatic condition and low economic status than the two agro-ecology as some finding indicated that the overall purpose of keeping poultry by poor group (46.2%), medium (35.0%) and rich (44.3%) were for sale, religious and home consumption, respectively [24]
Summary
The world poultry population has been estimated to be about 16.2 billion, with 71.6% in developing countries, producing 67,718,544 metric tons of chicken meat and 57,861,747 metric tons of hen eggs [1]. Ethiopia has about 56.53 million of chicken population, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 2019; 8(2): 54-63 where the 94.31% of them are indigenous chicken breeds kept in rural area and the rest of 3.21% and 2.49% of the total poultry are hybrid and exotic, respectively [4]. These traditional indigenous chicken production systems, the most widespread and almost every rural family owns and provide a valuable source of family protein and income and contribute the major national egg and poultry meat production as well as supply sufficient and balanced protein for the human health. Egg proteins are used as standard for measuring the nutritional quality of other food products [7,8]
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