A cross-sectional study was undertaken during the rainy and dry seasons to establish factors associated with poor hatchability in free-range indigenous chickens. Nine villages in the banana-coffee and banana-millet-cotton agroecological zones were used for the study. A questionnaire was administered to 143 household heads and 418 bloodfor- serum samples collected. A total of 216 un-hatched eggs and samples of ecto-parasites were collected from chicken. Hatchable eggs were weighed. The serum samples were tested for Newcastle disease (ND) and infectious bronchitis (IB) using haemagglutination inhibition (HI) test. Samples from un-hatched eggs were cultured on solid media and contaminating bacteria identified using staining and biochemical techniques. Ecto-parasites were identified using stereo microscope. Antibiogram for identified bacteria was conducted using tetracycline, erythromycin, penicillin and sulfonamide antibiotics. Concurrent infections of ND and IB with high HI titres (≥3Log2) were detected in 81.4% and 86.3% of eggs respectively. Egg contaminants included: Salmonella species (10.5%), Staphylococcus aureus (11.6%), Streptococcus faecalis (8.3%), Citrobacter species (7.0%), Escherichia coli (27.9%) and yeast (3.5%). All bacteria detected were sensitive to tetracycline and erythromycin, but resistant to penicillin. Identified ecto-parasites were mites (Dermanyssus gallinae), flies (Echidnophaga gallinacean) and lice (Menopon gallinae). Wet season hatchability (89.3%) was better than dry season hatchability (80.4%) in both agroecological zones and the hatchability of big eggs (>55g) (90.5%) was higher than that in medium-sized eggs (50- 55g) (85.2%) and small eggs (
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.