Body weight and morphometric traits of fulani ecotype chickens in South Western Nigeria are closely related

Abstract

The native chickens constitute about 80 percent of the 120 million poultry birds found in Nigeriabut have not been adequately characterized. Thus, the study was undertaken to establish the relationship among body weight and morphometric traits of thirty six Fulani Ecotype chickens raised for 25 weeks. Body weights were collected per bird and the morphometric traits (body length, drumstick length, drumstick circumference, breast girth, nose to shoulder, shoulder to tail and height at withers) were measured with tape rule on weekly basis. The measured parameters were subjected to correlation and regression analyses. Analysis showed that positive and high significant correlation existed between body weight and morphometric traits (p< 0.01). The result showed that accuracy of prediction was attained with linear and quadratic models but quadratic model had theoretical advantage over the linearmodelwith respect to its goodness of fit to the data. This means that an increase in growth rate of the body parts would correspondingly cause an increase in live weight gain of the bird. In conclusion, body weight and morphometric traits could be used to separate males and females Fulani Ecotype chicken at 17 weeks old. At this age, males appeared bigger than the females and their combs were well pronounced, this would help both sexes to grow uniformly, prevent indiscriminate mating before attaining the age of sexual maturity and help in selection of Fulani Ecotype chicken for improvement in meat and egg production.