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Climatic Change: Implication On Poultry Production
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Climatic change is a major challenge to agricultural development in
Africa and the world at large. Africa is more vulnerable because
agriculture is predominantly rain fed and hence fundamentally depends on
vagaries of weather (Watson, Zintower and Moses, 1987) climatic change
affect agriculture in several ways, one of which is its direct impact on
food production. Ozor, et al. (2010) stated that almost all sectors in
agriculture crop, livestock, pastoralism and fishery depend on weather
and climate whose vulnerability have mean that rural farmers who
implement their regular annual farm business plans risk total failure
due to climatic change implication.
The poultry site (2009) reported
that poultry production is particularly vulnerable to climatic change
because birds can only tolerate narrow temperature ranges. Some of the
potential disadvantages of climatic change on poultry include- heat
stress in both house and outdoor flocks, reduced egg production and
growth rate at higher temperature, higher mortality rate, increase
persistence of some endo and ecto parasite, increase in appetite of
birds, etc.
Statement of the Problem
Poultry production is
becoming the first priority of supply of animals’ protein sources and is
an income generating activity. FAO (2010) reported that nowadays,
poultry meat represent about 33% of the total global meat production.
However,
poultry flocks are particularly more vulnerable to climatic change
because birds can only tolerate narrow temperature ranges. Studies have
shown that the level of performance of birds depends on environmental
conditions; which includes temperature, relative humidity, sunshine
prevailing at a given time, housing system and ventilation. High
temperature and humidity for example have some active effect on poultry.
Increase of body temperature, decreases feed consumption and feed
efficiency, reduction in life weight, high mortality and decrease in
productivity and quality of egg (Ozbey and Oscellic, 2004).
Climatic
change poses the challenges of both loss of productivity and increase in
cost of production. The question at this juncture is are poultry
farmers aware and knowledgeable in climatic change threat?
This study
is designed to provide answers to these question and others, relating
to climatic change implication on poultry production in Delta State.
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