Review on available feed resources and feeding practice of village chicken: Ethiopia

This review paper focuses on available feed resources, feeding practice, trends of supplementary feeding, nutritional constraints and water sources and watering practice of village chicken in Ethiopia. There is no purposeful feeding of chickens under the village conditions in Ethiopia and scavenging is almost the only source of diet. From different research reports or findings, the common existing feed resources are cereal grains (dominantly maize and sorghum) followed by wheat, rice, worms, insects, grass, vegetables. Village chickens are also supplemented with different available cereal grains and food leftovers or kitchen wastes and different parts of vegetables and fruits, leaves of green crops. Almost all of the smallholder farmers or chicken owners provide supplementary feed indiscriminately to all classes of chicken on bare ground or floor. Shortage of feed supply and poor nutritional quality, limited skill of feeding system, unaffordable cost of feed ingredients, indiscriminate feeding of the different age classes of chickens’ together, lack of routine hygiene management, lack of clean water, water and feed trough are the major constraints of feeding. The objective of feed supplementation practice is mainly to increase egg yield, meat yield and to minimize mortality in some cases. River and rain water, tap and bore hall water, locally constructed underground water, spring, and well water are the major water sources of village chicken.