FERTILITY, HATCHABILITY, GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND AUTOSEXING POTENTIALS IN FOUR GENOTYPES OF LOCALCHICKEN

Abstract

Poultry production is one area of animal production with significant contribution to human food production.The indigenous chicken is noted for its unique meat and egg qualities and a low susceptibility to stress. However, it is limited with low fertility and depressed breeding capability. It becomes necessary improve fertility, breeding performance through crossbreeding and compare their fertility, hatchability data to determine the progress. For the present study, 44 chickens; 10 early feathering Fulani, 10 early feathering Yoruba, 10 late feathering Fulani and 10 feathering Yoruba, each of the feathering has 1 (one) male, while 400 fertilized eggs were used for mating and mating design was produced by crossing the early Fulani male and late Fulani female .These birds were individually wing tagged for identification purpose. Parameters evaluated include Egg number, Percentage fertility, Percentage Hatchability, Percentage dead in shell, Percentage dead in germ, Percentage weak in shell: It was observed that there were significant differences among the genetic group studied (LF EF, EF LF, EY LY, LY EY) gene with respects to fertility and hatchability. It can be concluded from this study that LF EF crossed had the highest fertility (69.23%) andhighest hatchability (46.15%). Similarly the lowest fertility and hatchability was recorded for the LY EY (54.88%) and (38.98%) respectively. For a higher fertility percentage, the Fulani ecotype chicken cross should be chosen ahead of other genotypes and in order to avoid economic loss, Yoruba ecotype cross had low fertility and hatchability