COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF A SOLAR POWERED INCUBATOR WITH THE MODERN ELECTRIC INCUBATOR

Abstract

In a rural part of many developing countries including Ethiopia; it is difficult to use modern incubator due to shortage of electricity and high initial capital as well as operating cost. Therefore, this experiment was conducted at Haramaya University poultry farm, Eastern Ethiopia to develop a solar powered incubator and compare its performance and profitability with the modern electric incubator. Solar powered incubator was developed and its performance was compared with modern electric incubator. In each incubator, there were three egg trays with 30 fresh eggs, and a total of 90 eggs per treatment were considered as observations. Data on change in egg weight, embryonic mortality and one-week performance of chick were collected and analyzed by student t-test using SPSS version 20-computer software, while, hatchability was analyzed by logistic regression. The results indicated that embryonic mortality, normal/abnormal chicks hatched, day old chicks weight, survival of 1 week chicks were found not significantly deferent(P>0.05), but hatchability of fertile eggs and dead-in-shell showed significant differences (P<0.05). Higher (P<0.05) hatchability (74.73%) was recorded from homemade incubator than the modern incubator (60.45%). Lower (P>0.05) dead-in-shell (12.63%) was recorded from homemade and the highest (P<0.05) dead-in-shell (23.52%) was recorded from modern incubator. The higher economic benefit (17,642.5 ETB) was earned from the solar powered incubator than the modern incubator. Thus, it can be concluded that newly developed incubator was more beneficial than modern incubator in both workability and economic analysis.