COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BODY WEIGHT AND SOME BIOMETRIC PARAMETERS OF PROGENIES OF INDIGENOUS CHICKENS AND THEIR NAPRI X CROSSES

Abstract

indigenous chickens. They include Normal feathered (N), Naked neck (Na) and Frizzle feathered (F) and their crosses with NAPRIX to form crosses of Normal X NAPRIX (NNPX), Naked neck X NAPRIX (NaNPX) and Frizzle X NAPRIX (FNPX) to evaluate their potentials for genetic improvement of body weight. Body weight and biometric traits at 28, 56 and 84 days and their correlation were evaluated. Body weight (B W), body length (BL), shank length (SL) and thigh length (TL) differed significantly (P<0.05) with NNPX having the highest values for the measured traits while body girth (BG) did not significantly differ (P>0.05). The correlation between traits was highly positive and significant (P< 0.01; r= 0.62-0.99) except for moderate relationship in NaNPX between BW and BG (P< 0.05; r= 0.31). This indicated that normal feather chicken can respond more fastly when subjected to genetic improvement among the indigenous chickens.