Naked-neck and frizzled feather fowls are high performance laying local chicken in Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to investigate the effect of genotype on the laying performance of Nigerian local chicken. The experiment was carried out using 99 local chicken of the three genotypes, comprising of 90 hens and 9 cocks (33 frizzle feather, 33 naked-neck feather and 33 normal feathered). Eggs were collected from the different genotypes for 8 weeks. The laying performance traits were egg number, hen-housed (%) and hen-day (%) egg production. Data collected were subjected to ANOVA in a completely randomised design. The hen-day egg production showed significant differences (P<0.05) in all the weeks. Naked-neck genotype performed better in terms of hen-day egg production than the other two genotypes and had highest values in week 1 (27.14±0.01), week 5 (27.60±0.09), week 7 (34.53±1.13) andweek 8 (16.30±0.03). Therewere significant differences (P<0.05) in all the weeks for hen-housed egg production and naked-neck also performed better than the frizzled and normal feather apart from week 2, 3 and 6. The naked-neck genotype had highest mean values in week 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8 with 27.18±0.06, 25.70±0.02, 19.33±0.67, 24.08±0.22 and 11.39±0.03 respectively for hen-housed egg production. The naked-neck had significantly (P<0.05) higher values for egg number when compared with frizzle and normal feathered genotypes. The values ranged between 5.67±0.67 to 2.00±0.10 (naked-neck), 6.33±0.33 to 2.67±0.67 (frizzle) and 3.33±0.33 to 1.33±0.33 (normal). It is therefore, reasonable to incorporate the naked-neck and frizzled feather genotypes of local chicken in producing locally-adapted commercial eggs