The research was conducted in Ada’a district of the Eastern Shoa Zone, Ethiopia. This study was
undertaken to investigate the major causes of chicken mortality under village production system and
the intervention measures by farmers against the major causes of chicken mortality under village
conditions. Data were collected through structured questionnaire from 180 households. Simple random
sampling method was used to select the peasant associations and the households. The majority of the
respondents put predation (91.9%) and disease (86.4%) as major causes of mortality in chicken older
than 7 days. More than half of hatched chicks are lost due to mismanagement (29.4%), predation
(67.8%) and other causes were also mentioned by less than 10% of the respondents. Significant
proportion of the respondents (48.3%) did not provide modern medicine and those using, utilize mainly
broad spectrum medicines without consulting veterinarians. The traditional medicaments included
different medicinal plant species. As a conclusion, chicken in the study areas are highly affected by
mortality due to predation and diseases. Appropriate management should be taken, therefore, to
control the incidence of disease and reduce the loss of chicken kept under village chicken production
systems due to predation and mismanagement.