The Livability of Bovans Brown Parent Layers Raised in Commercial Breeder Farm, Ethiopia

In order to meet its chicken meat and egg demand for its growing population and produces export surpluses, Ethiopian poultry sub-sector should move away from the traditional scavenging family poultry system (TFP) to the improved semi-scavenging family poultry system (IFP) and increase the scale of specialized poultry. The Bovans brown (BB) genetics are one of familiar exotic breed in Ethiopia. A prospective cohort study was conducted to estimate their livability and evaluate body weight and age as predictors of livability. There is direct proportional trend in body weight increment with slight difference with the standard. Both sex groups showed excellent growth with percent uniformity of 96.7% for males and 95.3% for females. Overall, 161 chickens died with the total weekly chicken death rate ranged from 0.00% to 1.79% varying from 0.00% to 3.14% in males and from 0.00% to 1.57% in females. On the other hand the percentage of cumulative mortality was 9.91% (46/510) for male chicken and 2.94 (115/4020)% for female and 3.69% (161/4530) for all. The mean mortality of chicken was 4.24 per week being 2.42 for males and 6.05 for females. The loss of female chickens exceeded that of male chickens, CV of 2.38 for the former and 1.82 for the latter. Using regression analysis, the identified significant predictors of mortality were age in weeks (Coef. = -0.78; p = 0.011) and body weight in gram (Coef. =-0.0086; p = 0.006). As both parameters get increased, mortality of chicken on the contrary got reduced. The overall livability of bovans brown breeder chicks at the end of rearing period was 96.45% (90.98% for males and 97.14 for females). Bovans brown parent stock layer chicks demonstrated excellent performance and livability.