Assessment of farmer opinions on vaccination of village chickens against Newcastle disease and its benefit in eight communities in Bauchi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Newcastle disease (ND) is a major limitation to the production, consumption and sales of village chickens in Africa. A pagrticipatory proportional piling exercise was conducted among village chicken farmers selected during focus group discussions held in eight communities in Bauchi State to assess their opinions on vaccination of their village chickens with thermostable Newcastle disease vaccine I-2 (I-2 NDV) and its benefits. The assessment involved 64 participants (8 from each community) whose chickens had received two I-2 NDV three months apart and 12 participants whose chicken had received only one I-2 NDV. Of the 64 farmers who initially were selected and had volunteered to participate in the study, two of the participants were not available to give their opinion on the importance and benefit of vaccination; while, eight of participants did not think the vaccine is important and have chosen not to participate in the assessment exercise. The remaining 54 participants had endorsed the vaccine with a total score of 100% (270/270). They also awarded 91.3% (283/310) of their scores to flock increase due to reduced mortality by I-2 NDV with the remaining 8.7% (27/310) of the scores indicating no flock increase. A probing of the reason why some of these farmers did not experience flock increase revealed the occurrence of fowl pox disease that has killed some of their chickens. The scores from participants whose chicken had received only one vaccine was 100% for both endorsement of the vaccine (60/60) and observation of flock increase (60/60). The study highlights I-2 NDV as an appropriate vaccine that could be used to control ND in village chickens in Bauchi State and beyond.

Keywords: Newcastle disease, Thermostable Newcastle disease vaccine (I-2), Village chickens, Bauchi State, Nigeria