Abstract:
The study was conducted to Assess the production performance of Bovans Brown and
SassoT44 chicken breeds reared in small-scale chicken production enterprises in selected
town of South Gondar administrative zone, Amhara Region. The data were collected from
September 2018 to June 2019. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to collect the
relevant data. A total of 21 small-scale farm producers and 350 chicken were selected for
survey and monitoring respectively. The survey data was analyzed using SPSS Version 20.
The constraints affecting small scale layer farms and enterprise owners were ranked using
index calculation. For analysis of monitoring data, GLM procedure of SAS 9.2, with the
model including the effects of breed, agro-ecology and breed-agro-ecology interaction was
used. Gross margin analysis was used to determine the profitability of the farm. The results of
the study showed that the sources of the chicks were Private farm (90.5%) and open market
(9.5%). Majority of the producers raise Sasso T44 breed (71.4%) while the rest (28.6%)
owned Bovans Brown. About 90.5% of the producers used commercial feeds. All poultry
producers provide water regularly. However, the production was affected by different
constraints including: Feed availability and cost, seasonal disease outbreaks, lack of market
linkage, and high cost of day old chicks. The monitoring results showed that breed-agro
ecology interaction affects the body weight and daily weight gain of chicken. Body weight of
Sasso T44 chicken at 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, and 22 weeks of age in Adiss Zemen town was
significantly higher than the other two towns. The highest daily weight gain was recorded for
Bovans Brown and Sasso T44 in Adiss Zemen which is 11.2±0.15 and 11.3±0.05 gram/day
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respectively. The overall mortality rates of chicken up to 22 weeks of age ware 13.2 % and
11.5 % for Sasso T44 and Bovans Brown, respectively. The overall mean of egg production
per hen up to 45 weeks of age for, Bovans Brown (119) was significantly (P < 0.05) higher
than Sasso T44 (105). The overall hen day egg production (HDEP %) in the first phase (45
weeks of age) was 65.6 % and 57.8 % for Bovans Brown and Sasso T44, respectively. The
average age at first egg was 164 and 132 days for Sasso T44 and Bovans Brown, respectively.
There is a significant difference (P < 0.0001) between the two breeds for age at first egg. The
total revenue, total variable cost and gross margin were ETB 225118, 85441.67