Characterization of indigenous chicken (IC) production systems in Rwanda was conducted from November 2015 to January 2016 with the aim of understanding socio-economic characteristics, management of IC, production parameters, feed resources, and constraints faced by farmers rearing IC. A survey involving 206 households was carried out in 5 districts with the highest populations of IC using structured questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SAS software. The results showed that the majority of respondents (62.4%) were males and 37.6% were females. The majority of respondents (83.6%) had formal education. All family members were involved in the chicken husbandry practices. However, women (78%) were highly responsible for IC management activities. The family size averaged 5 persons (ranging 2 to 13) per household. Land was privately owned by farmers (84%) with a mean holding of 0.87 ha per household. The production system was mainly extensive with minimum provision of supplementary feeds. Chickens were being housed in separate houses at night and mating was uncontrolled. Breeding and replacement stocks were mainly sourced from the hatching of eggs using broody hens (60.68% of respondents). There were no vaccination programs, and ecto- and endo-parasites control was done when need arose. Egg production, income generation, meat production, and production of breeding stock were the main reasons of keeping IC. The first 3 main challenges facing IC production were diseases outbreaks, lack of investment capital, and predators. Others challenges, such as feed shortage, thieves, fluctuation of market price, lack of information on poultry rearing, and lack of chicken houses, also were mentioned. The IC production constraints mentioned need urgent mitigation measures to sustain utilization of IC against the changing climatic and economic conditions. Therefore, individual, public institution, and non-governmental organization efforts are required to develop sustainable breeding objectives directed to functions of IC and production challenges faced in the systems.

A study was conducted on 37 randomly selected broiler poultry farmers in Rwanda to characterize the production system using pre-tested semi-structured questionnaires. The data were processed in SPSS and presented as means, percentages and ranges in tables and text. All respondents kept Cobb breed and young stock was mainly (73 %) imported from abroad. The majority of respondents were males (68 %) and most farmers had attended only primary level of education (40.5 %). Most of the farms were in the peri-urban (48.6 %) and urban (37.8 %) areas and hired male youth (62.2 %) mainly aged 19-35 years. The majority of respondents (68 %) kept less than 500 birds per batch. Recordkeeping was well practiced (91.9 %) and (62.6 %) had permanent poultry houses and all farmers used deep litter system. Purchased feedstuffs were reportedly (92 %) mixed at farm level as the main feed resource. Maize bran was reported (97.06 %) the main, basal feedstuff. The mortality rates of chick and growers were 12.3 and 9.4 %, respectively. The slaughter age was reportedly 60 days with an average dressing percentage of 75.67 %. The main challenges reported were scarcity and unaffordability of quality feeds (59.5 %), lack of market access (45 %) and lack of credit (21 %). The farmers had various views on improving broiler production in Rwanda ranging from establishing feed processing industries 62.2 %, improving marketing facilities 35.1 %, increasing availability of day-old chick and access credit 27 %, to intensification of farmer training 16.2 %.

Rwanda has about 4.5 million of indigenous chicken (IC) that are very low in productivity. To initiate any genetic improvement programme, IC needs to be accurately characterized. The key purpose of this study was to ascertain the genetic diversity of IC in Rwanda using microsatellite markers. Blood samples of IC sampled from 5 agro-ecological zones were collected from which DNA was extracted, amplified by PCR and genotyped using 28 microsatellite markers. A total of 325 (313 indigenous and 12 exotic) chickens were genotyped and revealed a total number of 305 alleles varying between 2 and 22 with a mean of 10.89 per locus. One hundred eighty-six (186) distinct alleles and 60 private alleles were also observed. The frequency of private alleles was highest in samples from the Eastern region, whereas those from the North West had the lowest. The influx of genes was lower in the Eastern agro-ecological zone than the North West. The mean observed heterozygosity was 0.6155, whereas the average expected heterozygosity was 0.688. The overall inbreeding coefficient among the population was 0.040. Divergence from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was significant (p<0.05) in 90% of loci in all the populations. The analysis of molecular variance revealed that about 92% of the total variation originated from variation within populations. Additionally, the study demonstrated that IC in Rwanda could be clustered into four gene groups. In conclusion, there was considerable genetic diversity in IC in Rwanda, which represents a crucial genetic resource that can be conserved or optimized through genetic improvement.

Indigenous chickens ( IC ) contribute socioeconomically to household food security in the region of East Africa. However, their potential and improvement are not well documented. This review is aimed at exploring the production and potential of indigenous chickens in East Africa. The various tools for literature search such as google search and Google scholars, agricultural journals, animal sciences and health journals, poultry related journals, and country online databases were used to gather information. IC were primarily reared by women and were kept predominantly under scavenging systems where the conditions of management (feeding, housing, and health care) are poor. They presented a high variation in their reproduction and production characteristics. The products (meat and eggs) were of good quality and preferred by the local consumers. Despite the variation and potential of IC, improvements in the village system were constrained by diseases and loss due to Newcastle, Gumboro, and Ecto-endo parasites and predators. Farmers primarily used traditional methods to control the diseases, and some used conventional medications and vaccines. Due to the potential of IC, the exploration of various strategies for improvement supported by the details of their genetic variability and adaptation as well as different management conditions was a goal of this review.