Disease costs across improved and traditional poultry production systems in Tigray, Ethiopia: evidence from an endogenous switching regression model

Background Chicken production is vital to food security, income generation, and rural livelihood development in Ethiopia. However, chicken diseases remain a major constraint to productivity and profitability across both improved and traditional production systems. Despite their economic importance, empirical evidence on disease-related costs and their determinants remains limited. This study estimated the economic costs of chicken diseases and identified their determinants using an Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model applied to cross-sectional data from 1,005 chicken-producing households in Tigray, Ethiopia. Results Descriptive results revealed that disease outbreaks and chicken mortality were among the most important constraints to poultry production, alongside feed shortages, high feed costs, limited veterinary services, and inadequate access to veterinary drugs. The mean annual disease-related cost was significantly higher among households adopting improved production systems than those operating traditional systems (USD 637.70 vs. USD 219.71; p < 0.01). This difference may reflect greater investment in preventive health management and biosecurity rather than greater disease-induced losses alone. Egg loss was also significantly greater in improved systems (USD 80.12 vs. USD 19.31; p < 0.01). Furthermore, improved systems incurred higher expenditures on feed, vaccination, biosecurity measures, prophylactic treatments, deworming, acaricide application, and herbal remedies, with most differences statistically significant ( p < 0.05). The ESR results revealed system-specific heterogeneity in disease-related costs. In improved systems, larger household size ( p < 0.05), larger flock size ( p < 0.05), rearing a single age group of chickens ( p < 0.01), access to improved feed ( p < 0.01), poultry farming experience ( p < 0.10), and access to vaccination services ( p < 0.10) were associated with lower disease-related costs. Conversely, household head age ( p < 0.05), marital status ( p < 0.01), and income from off-farm activities, livestock, and poultry production ( p < 0.05) were associated with higher disease-related expenditures. Treatment-effect estimates further confirmed differences between production systems ( p < 0.01). The ATT, ATU, and ATE indicated additional annual disease-related costs of $888.96, $943.04, and $918.23 per household, respectively, following adoption of improved production systems. Conclusion Strengthening integrated disease management, veterinary and vaccination services, and poultry husbandry practices is essential for reducing disease-related losses and sustaining productivity gains.