Abstract
Poor biosecurity and Newcastle disease continues to be a major constraint to rural poultry production system in Nigeria. This study was conducted among 200 poultry farmers in the state with the use of questionnaire to assess the level of biosecurity and constraints among rural poultry farmers in six Local Government Areas of Zamfara State, Nigeria. Information obtained from respondents showed that, only about 12% of the farmers practice combination of hand washing and footbath in their poultry pens as well. Only about 13% of the farmers most times clean their pens and 50% of the respondents dispose carcasses by refuse dumping. Newcastle disease is reported as the most common disease and the major clinical signs were greenish diarrhoea and twisting of neck. During outbreaks the most farmers preferred to slaughter (42.5%), while the others treat (27.0%) the birds with veterinary methods. Antibiotics (25.0%), antiviral agents (4.0%) and local remedies (33.0%). Most of the respondents (53.0%) sometimes clean their poultry pen. Finally, it concluded that, the low level of commercial poultry production in the study area might be due to poor practices by the farmers. So, it is recommended that, government should put program about training poultry farmers on biosecurity, disease prevention and the adoption of modern husbandry practices suitable for the traditional poultry production system.
Highlights
Biosecurity refers to all the management practices aimed at excluding or reducing the potential for the transmission and spread of diseases to animals, humans or an area initially free from the diseases causing agents [1]
About 12% of the respondents use a combination of hand washing and footbath in their farms as preventive measures against poultry diseases, while about 69% of them do not use any of these measures (Table 2)
When there was an outbreak of Newcastle disease most farmers (42.5%)
Summary
Biosecurity refers to all the management practices aimed at excluding or reducing the potential for the transmission and spread of diseases to animals, humans or an area initially free from the diseases causing agents [1]. Biosecurity is of much importance in poultry production in so much that the FAO based the classification of poultry production systems on the levels of biosecurity [2]. Strict biosecurity measures in addition to vaccinations are strategic prevention and control policies adopted to control some contagious poultry diseases, are not enough to control them under field conditions [3]. The village poultry are kept by over 90% of rural households as local assets [4]. In Nigeria, virtually every household in rural and peri-urban communities keeps poultry for meat, supplementary income and f or meeting a wide range of social obligations [5, 6]. Nigerian poultry population is estimated to be 137.6 million, with backyard poultry population constituting 84%
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