Abstract

Ethiopia has considerable livestock resource and poultry population is third ranked preceded by cattle and beehive. Besides their important and numbers, little is known about their production systems, population growth, egg utilization trends and development strategies in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian poultry population is almost entirely composed of indigenous chicken and recent estimates showed that poultry 81.7%, 10.9%, and 7.4% are indigenous, hybrids and exotic, respectively. The distribution of poultry population in Ethiopia is diverging from region to region. Oromia region has the largest number of poultry population followed by Amhara, South Nation and Nationality People of Ethiopia (SNNP). Poultry production system in Ethiopia is indigenous and an integral part of farming system. Based on the objective, breed, flock size, housing, feeding, health, biosecurity level and technology used, the poultry production system in Ethiopia can be classified into extensive or scavenging, semi-intensive, small-scale intensive and large scale commercial poultry production system. The extensive scavenging and small-extensive scavenging systems are the dominant forms of poultry production in Ethiopia. The poultry population growth over the year almost stagnant because of high poultry mortality due to lack of adaptation of introduced exotic poultry, diseases, predators prevalent in the scavenging production systems and limited expansion of commercial poultry production both in terms of number of operators and volume of operation. The poultry sector did not have a clear roadmap guiding its development until the recent production of the LMP. The future study should be attention on to expansion of large scale commercial poultry production system, constraints of poultry population growth, adaption of introduced exotic poultry breeds and the reason for eggs sale and household consumption fluctuated.