The frequency and influence of spur gene on six metric traits in Nigeria Local Chicken

Abstract

A study was collected in two local government arears of Oyo state,Nigerian, an adult, free-ranging indigenous chiken on the incidence and possible influence of the spur gene (sl) on the body weight and five other matric traits: Body length (BL), wing length (WL), shank length (SL), shank thickness (ST) and breast girth (BG) which are indicative of the body size and growth 486 (37.15%) of the 1039 sampled local fowls were sparrowed and the gene frequency was estimated to 0.61. the calculated gene and genotype frequencues were significantly different (p<0.05) from the expected values for a recessive gene where complete dominance is operating while sex analysis revealed high significant (P<0.01) incidene of the spur in males (70.3%). There was no significant (P>0.05) genotype effect on any of the metric traits under consideration.  It is demonstrated in this study that the incidence of spur gene (sl) seems to be sex-influenced, higher than expected but had no effect on the six metric traits considered.