Abstract:
Marek’s disease, a highly contagious and an economically significant oncogenic and paralytic viral
diseases of poultry, is becoming a serious problem in Ethiopia’s poultry sector. The aim of the study
was to examine the relationship between risk factors and their contribution to develop risk with the
intentions to implement MD control measures in the different chicken production systems of Ethiopia
using the SEM framework. A questionnaire was designed based on the framework and each model
constructed was measured using a set of rating scale items. Thus, a sample size of 200 farmers from
different production systems were chosen for the data collection. From the analysis, Cornbrash’s
Alpha (coefficient of reliability) based on the average inter-item correlations were evaluated for
each parameter. The result showed that when litter management goes up by 1, the number of sick
goes down by 37.575, the number of staff goes up by 1, the number of sick goes down by 7.63, litter
management goes up by 1, the number of deaths goes down by 2.505, flock size goes up by 1, the
number of deaths goes down by 0.007 than the rest of the activities. The result of this structural
equation modeling finding indicates that the data fit the model well (χ2 = 0.201, RMSEA = 0.000,
CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.496, Degrees of freedom = 2) and the model was appropriated. In conclusion, flock
size, litter management and number of staff activities have more impact on the numbers of sick, drops
in egg production and the number of deaths. Therefore, practicing regular awareness
