Fertility, Hatchability and Eggs Quality Traits of Nigerian Locally Adapted Chickens in the Derived Savanna Environment of Nigeria

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to compare fertility, hatchability and egg quality traits of Nigerian locally adapted chickens in derived savanna environment of Nigeria. A total number of 1928 eggs consistof309eggs of naked neck, 635 eggs of frizzle feather, 590 eggs of Fulani ecotype and 394 eggs of normal feather eggs were used to study hatchability traits of the four genotypes. The results showed that fulani ecotypes had highest eggset (100%), fertile eggs (85.59%) and lowest infertile egg (14.41%) while highest and lowest hatchability and dead in shell was obtained for normal feather eggs of 86.67% and 13.33% respectivelythan other genotypes. Most of the parameters measured for correlation coefficient were positively significant for all the genotypes. Significant (P < 0.05) effect was observed among the egg traits measured and the genotypes. Naked neck eggs had highest egg weight (44.86g), egg length (7.03mm), shell weight (4.29mm), yolk weight (14.57mm) and yolk height (3.29mm) than its counterpart genotype eggs while normal feather eggs  recorded highest egg breadth (5.34mm), albumen weight (22.68mm) and albumen height (4.58mm) over other genotype groups eggs.The presentresults indicated that fulani ecotype eggs performed better than other genotypes group used in this study in respect to hatchability traits and naked neck and normal feather eggs were better in egg quality traits than their counterpart genotype eggs.

Keywords: Local chickens, egg quality traits, hatchability, fertility and derived savanna.