The study is aimed to assess live weight and some morphometric traits to serve as the basis for documentation and utilization in improvement programme of the locally-adapted ducks. This study observed five phenotypic characteristics and assessed live weight, and seven morphometric traits in 200 adult domestic ducks (105 drakes and 95 ducks) in the humid zone of Nigeria between February and August 2012. The observed characteristics were plumage colour, shank colour, eye colour, incidence and colour of caruncle. The seven morphometric traits included; body length, breast circumference, bill length, neck length, wing length, shank length, and foot length. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression coefficients. Plumage colour was predominantly pied (black/white) with a relative prevalence of 69.0%. Shank colour was mainly yellow with a relative proportion of 62.5%. About 62% of the study ducks were yellow-eyed; the remaining ones had black eyes (38%). One-half (50%) of the study sample had caruncle; the remaining half had no caruncle. Red caruncle was predominant with the relative prevalence of 58.5%. The mean live weights of drakes and ducks were 3.16±0.814 kg and 2.05±0.449 kg, respectively. Coefficients of the phenotypic correlation between live weight and morphometric traits both in ducks and drakes ranged from 0.914 to 0.987 (P<0.01). The correlation coefficients showed that body length had the strongest relationship with live weight followed by wing length (r = 0.987 and 0.984). Regression analysis showed that body length and wing length had the highest coefficients of determination (R2 = 0.974 and 0.969), indicating that they were the best predictors of live weight. Also, the sampled Muscovy ducks showed a substantial level of variation in live weight and some morphometric traits, thereby pointing to probable gainful selection efforts. The regression equations in this study could serve as useful practical tools by livestock farmers, researchers and rural development workers for weight estimation in the field and for selection purposes.

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Pituitary Specific transcription factor 1 (PIT-1) gene is one of the POU gene family and play key roles in the regulation of muscle development which is important for body weight in chickens. This study was carried out to detect the polymorphism of PIT-1 gene and study its association with body weight in Fulani and Yoruba ecotype of Nigerian indigenous chickens. A total of 100 day-old chicks comprising of fifty chicks of Fulani and Yoruba ecotypes were used for this study. These chicks were genotyped using PCR-RFLP technique and their growth rate was also measured throughout the study. Our results showed two alleles A and B controlling genotypes AA and AB which were significantly associated with bodyweight of the chickens. Interestingly, we found out that AA genotype had the highest frequency of 0.64 and 0.76 compared with AB genotype which had a frequency of 0.36 and 0.24 in the Fulani and Yoruba ecotype respectively. Furthermore, the PIT-1 genotypes (AA and AB) were significantly associated (p < 0.05) with body weight at week 4 and week 12 in Fulani and Yoruba ecotype chicken respectively. PIT-1 gene was polymorphic in Fulani and Yoruba ecotypes of Nigeria Indigenous Chickens.

The domestic Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) provide unique genetic resources patterned by both tropical environmental conditions and human activities, the evaluation of their genetic diversity and population structure will shade light on the mechanism of their remarkable adaptive capacities. We therefore analyzed the variation in mtDNA cytochrome b and nuclear DNA CYP2U1 sequences of 378 Nigerian Muscovy ducks (comprising of 287 de novo and 91 downloaded) plus 80 published sequences of Muscovy ducks from India. The results showed high haplotype diversity (0.800 ± 0.023) among Nigerian Muscovy duck populations with 91 distinct haplotypes for the nuclear DNA CYP2U1 gene but low (0.266 ± 0.033) for cytochrome b with 31 haplotypes. The median-joining networks of both markers grouped Nigerian Muscovy ducks into two; the first group consisting of only Nigerian Muscovy duck populations, and the second group Nigerian with Indian populations. Neutrality test results indicated that Nigerian populations experienced recent population expansion and/or genetic hitchhiking. A geographic signal was absent in line with previously studied poultry species in Nigeria. The most prominent haplotype dominated across all regions in Nigeria, which may be due to extensive genetic intermixing except for the Indian population (FST = 0.02550, P = 0.01075). This indicated low genetic differentiation between and within Nigerian Muscovy duck as revealed by the suitability of the nuclear DNA CYP2U1 gene.

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