Infectious diseases of poultry and its distribution in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study was carried out to determine the characteristics, types and spread of infectious poultry diseases in commercial poultry farms in Ogun State using  semistructured questionnaires. One hunded questionnaires were randomly  administered in the four geographical zones (Remo, Ijebu, Yewa and Egba) of the State. However, eighty six were retrieved. Data were collected on flock size, species of poultry kept, types of poultry diseases experienced and analysed using descriptive statistic and percentage. The coordinates of the respondent farms were also taken with the aid of a Global Positioning System (GPS) and imported into  General Information System (GIS) to derive spatial map. Result revealed that  44.19% of the poultry farms were established less than 10 years ago and were mostly small scale farms (59.3%). Only 2.33% of the farms possessed more than 120,000 birds while 82.56% the respondents reared chicken out of which 22.10% reared layers. Sixty seven percent of the farms experienced disease occurrence while majority (97.67%) were affected by infectious, metabolic/nutritional, parasitic, and behavioural diseases. Newcastle (16.28%) and Escherichia coli (19.77%) were the major viral and bacterial diseases experienced. The study concluded that  majority of the farms were small scale enterprise and layers constituted the highest proportion of chickens. Risk map of the diseases showed that Ogun State has  medium affinity for infectious diseases. However, Ogun State has high risk of Newcastle and Gumboro diseases but very low risk of Infectiuos Bronchitis and fowl pox diseases. Poultry Farmers were enjoined to maintain high level of structural and operational bio-security in order to maintain healthy flock and optimise production efficiency.

Keywords: Poultry, infectious diseases, distribution, Ogun State