Tackling poultry diseases in Ethiopia

Developing countries such as Ethiopia have many indigenous chicken varieties which are well adapted to local environments as they are excellent foragers, better able to avoid predator attacks and demonstrate better immunity to common diseases. However, due to relatively low genetic potential and poor levels of husbandry, most of these indigenous chicken breeds grow slowly and are poor producers of small sized eggs. Furthermore, infectious diseases have a major impact and prevent even this limited genetic potential from being realised. Breeding programs using local chicken ecotypes suggest rapid improvement in productivity is possible. However, these programs are yet to select for resistance to infectious disease.

The ‘chicken health for development‘ project in Ethiopia aims to develop a poultry breeding program to improve resistance to priority infectious diseases whilst enhancing productivity and production.

Project researcher Stacey Lynch recently published this video on the work of the project as it works with communities to sample local chickens for diseases and genetic resistance …