Chicken housing among the rural community of Tonj County in South Sudan: Types and designs

Abstract

Rural communities usually exert talents and arts in the construction of chickens’ shelters as a token for chickens’ contributions to their livelihoods worldwide. A purposive cross-sectional study was conducted to highlight types and designs of rural chickens’ houses among the village/Boma communities in Tonj County, South Sudan. A total of 400 (four hundred) households owning chickens were randomly selected from 4 (four) villages for the study. A stratified randomized sample collection method, direct interview, enumeration and observations were used. Observations revealed that 271 (67.75%) of the households built houses above the ground level compared to 129 (32.25%) that built close to the ground level. 117 (43.17%) of the households preferred the dome shaped design houses, meanwhile 192(48%) frequently utilized bamboos for constructing the houses. The study concluded that high proportion of rural community was aware of the importance of housing to chickens. Furthermore, the dome shaped design and the bamboos were preferred for chickens’ houses. Farmers Field School (FFS) is needed for educating households to develop inclusive housing structures that realize more benefits and disseminate reciprocation of such study elsewhere in similar rural settings of South Sudan.