CONFORMATION TRAITS AS PREDICTORS OF BODY WEIGHT OF BROILER CHICKENS IN THE SEMI-ARID ZONE OF NIGERIA

Abstract

The objective of the experiment was to assess the impact of conformation traits on the body weight among Napri-X, Marshall and Ross broiler chickens. The study used 315 strains. The birds were brooded with the aid of a kerosene stove and charcoal as heat source and reared on deep litter from day-old to 8 weeks of age. All the chicks were fed ad libitum with a broiler starter feed containing 23.75% Crude Protein (CP) and 3,038.64 MEKcal/kg up to 4 weeks of age. Thereafter, the birds were given broiler finisher diet containing 19.95% CP and 3,102.00 MEKcal/kg up to 8 weeks based on the standard of National Research Council (NRC, 2004). The experiment was conducted in a Complete Randomized Design (CRD). Treatments were replicated seven times with fifteen birds per pen. Conformation traits otherwise called linear body measurements were taken on weekly basis. The data collected on each strain were subjected to Linear Multiple Regression Model procedure of SPSS (2011) version 20. The results show that the regression analysis was highly significant (p<0.001) in all the groups and R2 values more than 50% in all the groups. This suggests that conformation traits are very good predictors for body weight in broilers. Therefore, it is concluded that in rural areas where scale is not available, any of these conformation traits (NEL, BKL, THL, SHL, BRW, BDL
and WNL) could be used to predict body weight of broiler chicken. It is therefore recommended that, poultry breeders and farmers can use any of these conformation traits to obtain satisfactory body weight of chicken.