Abstract
This cross-sectional study was carried out to assess disease management and biosecurity measures of small scale commercial poultry farms by structured questionnaire through personal interview. The data was analysed by χ2 and t-test, one way analysis of variance and general linear model by SPSS software. The result shown that, only 38.8% of the producers’ suspects Coccidiosis was the frequently occurred disease in the farm. Some of the producers (30.6%) suspect the cause of the disease might be environmental problem, 24.5% management problem, and 12.2% both environment and management. The most leading symptoms of diseases that occurred in the study area were ruffled feather (15.5%), loss of appetite (15.1%), depression (12.6%), diarrhoea (9.7%), and others. About 79.6% of the farms had close relation with the veterinarian and consult about disease management. Only 12.2% of the farms vaccinate NCD, 49% NCD and Gumboro, 28.6% NCD, Gumboro and fowlbox and the rest 10.1% vaccinate their chicks for NCD, Gumboro, fowlbox, Fowl cholera/typhoid and Marix disease. Biosecurity measures were very crucial in the poultry farms. About 63.3% of the producers dressed on protective cloth (tuta), only 8.2% of the producers wear hand gloves. About 77.6% of the producers used the foot path in front of their farm entrance. Prevention and treatments were the major mechanisms for controlling measure of disease and the mortality percentage of chicks was only 4.7%. From this study, it could be concluded that better disease management and biosecurity measures are required to attain better poultry production Key words: Biosecurity, disease, mortality rate, symptoms, vaccination.
Highlights
It is essential that the flock is in good health to achieve their performance potential; one of the important reasons for failure in the poultry industry is disease
Almost all the producers did not know the type of disease that occurred in their farms and were not accustomed to recording the disease that occur; few of the producers (38.8%) reported Coccidosis was the frequently occurring disease in the study area
Almost similar result was reported by Nusirat et al (2012) who noted that about 33.3% of the producers reported that coccidiosis was the most common disease outbreak in farms, followed by infectious bursal disease (IBD) (24.2%) and Newcastle disease (NCD) (21.2%) in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria
Summary
It is essential that the flock is in good health to achieve their performance potential; one of the important reasons for failure in the poultry industry is disease. Various types of poultry diseases can caused. Almost all types of animal can be affected by different types of disease in their lifetime. Poultry are not exception; they get affected by numerous diseases. In small scale commercial farms, coccidiosis was identified as the most common disease (Singla and Gupta, 2012), followed by infectious bursal disease (IBD) and Newcastle disease (NCD) (Safari et al, 2004; Akidarju et al, 2010). Infectious bronchitis, Marek's disease, fowl cholera, fowl pox, avian encephalomyelitis are the major poultry diseases which affects the flock in the farm (Jacob et al, 1998; Ahmed et al, 2011; Hailu, 2012). Diseases can be caused by viruses, mycoplasma, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and parasites (Sandhu et al, 2009; Hamra, 2010)
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