PREDICTION OF BODY WEIGHT OF NIGERIA INDIGENOUS TURKEY USING MORPHOMETRIC TRAIT MEASUREMENTS AT EIGHTEEN WEEKS OF AGE
Keywords:
Indigenous turkey, Prediction of body weight, Morphometric traitAbstract
Turkey is one of the species in poultry which has numerous attributes that can be used to provide protein in the meals of Nigerians. However, turkey production has not received the needed attention when compared to other poultry (chicken) species, partly due to the paucity of documented information on them. The aim of study was to estimate body weight of eighteen weeks old Nigerian indigenous turkey using three mathematical functions (linear, quadratic and cubic) from
morphometric trait measurements. The morphometric traits studied were body length (BL), breast girth (BG), keel length (KL) and shank length (SL). Data were collected on the birds from day old to eighteen weeks of age. Body measurements were regressed against body weight at 18 weeks of age using simple linear and non-linear (quadratic and cubic) regression analyses. The correlation coefficients (r) between body weight and morphometric trait measurements were highly significant (p<0.001), with a range of 0.565 - 0.876. The coefficient of determination R2 varied from 33.10 to 31.90%, 57.00 to 73.20%, 74.80 to 76.70% and 56.70 to 60.60% for body length, breast girth, keel length and shank length respectively. The relationship was better described by quadratic and cubic functions. It was concluded that body weight in Nigerian indigenous turkey could be predicted by farmers from any given value of the four morphometric trait measurements.