Evaluation of Productive and Reproductive Performances of Different Strains of Chickens under Varied Management Systems in Western Ethiopia
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Date
2020-06
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Abstract
A cross sectional survey, follow-up and evaluation, and on-farm and on-station performance evaluation were employed to study the productive and reproductive performances of three improved and one unimproved chicken strains. Improved Horro chicken, a synthetic Debre-zeyit (DZ) White-feathered and the exotic Potchefstroom Koekoek chickens were used for the on-station and on-farm evaluation study where as an assessment on poultry production system of unimproved Horro chickens was undertaken on-farm. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Statistical Analysis system (SAS) were used for statistical analysis based on the appropriatness of statistical softwares. The mean age at first egg of hens at the highland, mid-altitude and lowland were 28.44±0.43, 25.49±0.52 and 23.63±0.46 weeks, respectively that the variation was significant (P<0.05) among the agro-ecologies. The difference among egg per clutch and length of days in lay per clutch were also significant (P<0.05) where as variation in clutch per year was highly significant (P<0.001) among the three agro-ecologies. Concerning the mean chicks’ age at weaning and male chicken at marketing, the overall mean age at weaning was (9.72±0.21) (in weeks) where as the mean age at marketing for male chicken (7.72±0.23) (in months). The on-station study revealed that breed of chicken, age in weeks and interaction of chicken breed with age in weeks had significant effect (P <0.001) on growth performances of chicks before their eight weeks age. The highest overall mean daily feed consumption (53.89±14.37) was recorded for the Potchefstroom Koekoek chicken breed and the lowest for DZ White-feathered chickens (50.28±10.50) though the variation among the chicken breeds was statistically non significant (P > 0.05). The mean feed conversion efficiency (17.47±2.79) of DZ White-feathered chickens was higher than the feed conversion efficiency (13.56±2.74) reported for Improved indigenous Horro chickens, though the difference was statistically non significant. In all the three breeds of chickens, males grew significantly (P < 0.001) faster than females. Significant effects of agro-ecology on the performance of chicken breeds also showed the presence of genetic-environment interactions among the three ecologic locations of the study areas. The internal and external egg quality characteristics of unimproved Horro chickens’ egg collected from the three agro-ecologies was determined and the mean internal egg quality traits (albumen weight, yolk weight, yolk-albumen ratio and yolk diameter) was significantly (P<0.001) affected by agro-ecology. The external egg quality traits were also significantly (P<0.001) affected by agro-ecologic variation where the lowland chickens’ egg scored higher value in egg quality. The low performance of Improved Horro chickens both in weight gain at their starter and growing phase and low younger (growing) age survival rate leads to a recommendation that these birds in addition to their productive performance need to be selected for their better adaptability.
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PhD Thesis
Keywords
Agro-ecology, Improved Horro, Reproductive performance, Potchefstroom Koekoek