Country report: Botswana

摘要

Poultry-raising is the livestock enterprise available to all farming families, even the poorest (Bell 1992). Village chickens comprise the major part of tile poultry industry in many developing countries (Spradbrow 1997). Village flocks are small, of mixed age and mostly unhoused or poorly housed. Most village chicken production systems are based mainly on native, domestic species which require very low levels of inputs (Sayila 1999) leading to low output, hence the term 'low input/low output system'. Village stocks comprise the local unimproved poultry breeds commonly found in developing countries (Crawford 1992), or may include mixed (unspecified) breeds resulting from uncontrolled breeding (Kulube 1990). The terms indigenous. native or traditional chickens are often used as synonyms for village chickens, even where there is a high proportion of non-indigenous blood in the flocks. They are also termed scavenging chickens. where they are allowed to run free in the village surrounds, and backyard chickens where they are kept in a house yard (confined or free).