Abstract
Indigenous chickens were evaluated for their egg production, growth performances, and external and internal egg quality parameters across three agro-ecologies. For experiment 540 (180 male and 432 female) chickens were distributed to the three agro-ecologies (lowland, midland, and highland) at their 20 weeks age. Body weight was recorded from each chicken during distribution, 4th week, and 8th week after distribution into pre-selected households. Egg production potential was identified from the indigenous chickens across different agro-ecologies. Moreover, egg quality traits were evaluated from randomly selected 270 (90 from each agroecology) eggs. Egg production of indigenous chickens in the highland was 47.7 which was highly significantly (P = 0.0001) lower number than of midland (54.2) and lowland (51.4). Except for Shell weight, all the external egg quality parameters evaluated were exhibited significant differences across different agro-ecologies. Among the internal egg quality parameters only albumen weight had a significantly (P = 0.007) higher in midland than highland. Most of the variation in egg weight was due to the positive correlation with egg length (69%), and egg width (67%). There was a variation for performance and egg quality traits of indigenous chickens in different agro-ecologies, especially better in midland, which might be resulted from the variation in environment, feed resources availability, and better management followed by households.
Highlights
In Ethiopia, Indigenous chickens are the most widespread, and almost every rural family own, which provides a valuable source of family protein and income Tadelle et al (2003)
On average 20 weeks aged chickens were collected from the three agro-ecologies and assigned randomly to pre-selected farmers
In 20th week, live body weight was heavier for the chickens in midland than the remaining agro-ecologies; there is no significant (P = 0.267) difference between body weight of the chickens in lowland and highland agro-ecologies
Summary
In Ethiopia, Indigenous chickens are the most widespread, and almost every rural family own, which provides a valuable source of family protein and income Tadelle et al (2003). Traditional free scavenging is the common production system (no adequate supply of feeding, housing, and health care). This production system results in poor productive performance of indigenous chickens (low egg production performance, small-sized egg, long sexual maturity of hens and cockerels, high chicken mortality, and chickens were exposed to predators). Indigenous chickens are poor in production and reproductive performance which characterized by small-sized eggs, slow growth rate, late maturity (longer reproductive cycle), slow age at first mating, small clutch size, natural learning to broodiness (broodiness for an extended period), and high mortality of chicks (Zemene et al, 2012)
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