Technical and economic evaluation of different methods of Newcastle disease vaccine administration

Two types of locally produced live vaccines (HB1 and La Sota--lentogenic strains) and inactivated oil adjuvant (IOAV) vaccine were used to compare the efficiency of three vaccination techniques, namely drinking water, ocular and spray on broiler chicks. The ocular route of vaccination on 1-day-old chicks followed by a booster dose on the third week through the same route induced a significantly higher level of haemagglutination inhibition antibody titre (P < 0.0001). The highest mean antibody titre was log(2) 6.6 and 93.3% of the chicks were protected from the challenge. The spray technique induced a lower antibody titre (peak of log(2) 5.9) and only 53% of the chicks in this treatment survived against the challenge. The results of this study show that the ocular route is superior to the drinking water route, which is superior to the spray technique. The economic analysis result showed that the ocular HB1 and La Sota vaccine administration method to 1- and 21-day-old chicks gave the highest revenue followed by the drinking water method. In terms of total cost, the injection method required the highest cost (0.21 birr/chick) followed by the ocular method (0.18 birr/chick). The marginal cost of vaccine administration is too small compared with marginal revenues from relative effectiveness of the methods. The internal rate of return for the ocular method was very high. The results of sensitive analysis on revenues from different vaccination methods indicate that a 25% reduction in broiler price reduces the marginal revenue from the ocular method by 12 487 birr but this still does not prove that the ocular method is economically viable for small- and medium-scale poultry farms.