Mortality as the primary constraint to enhancing nutritional and financial gains from poultry: A multi-year longitudinal study of smallholder farmers in western Kenya
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chickens are a widely held economic and nutritional asset in rural Africa and are frequently managed by women. Despite potential benefits of larger flock sizes, the average number of chickens kept at the household level is reported to be low. Whether this reflects decision-making to maximize benefits per unit labor by voluntary reduction of chicken numbers by consumption or sale versus involuntary losses due to mortality is a significant gap in knowledge relevant to improving smallholder household welfare. METHODS: In a 4-year longitudinal study of 1,908 smallholder households in rural western Kenya, the number of chickens owned by quarterly census at each household was determined. Households reported gains and losses of chicken over the immediate previous quarter. Gains were classified as on-farm or off-farm; losses were classified as voluntary (sales, gifts, consumption) or involuntary (mortality, unclassified loss). RESULTS: The mean number of chickens owned over the 16 quarters was 10, consistent with prior cross-sectional data. Involuntary losses represented 70% of total off-take, while voluntary off-take represented the remaining 30%. Mortality composed 60% of total reported off-take and accounted for most of the involuntary losses. Household consumption, sales, and gifts represented 18%, 9%, and 3% of off-take, respectively. CONCLUSION: The overwhelming majority of off-take can be classified as involuntary off-take, principally due to mortality, that does not reflect the owner's decision to maximize value through nutritional gain, income, or social capital. This strongly suggests that there is substantial opportunity to enhance the value of chickens as an asset, both nutritional and income generating, for smallholder households living at poverty level. Our findings suggest that programs emphasizing community level poultry vaccination and feed supplementation are much more likely to be effective than those solely focused on providing chickens.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".