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Asian Journal of Animal Sciences

Year: 2012 | Volume: 6 | Issue: 2 | Page No.: 85-91
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Authors

S.S.A. Egena

A.T. Ijaiya

R. Kolawole

Keywords

Research Article

Comparative Evaluation of Spurred and Spurless Male and Female Indigenous Nigerian Chicken in the Three Administrative Zones of Niger State

S.S.A. Egena, A.T. Ijaiya and R. Kolawole
The study was carried out using 750 indigenous Nigerian chickens comprising 543 males and 207 females brought to the market by farmers for sale in the three administrative zones of Niger state, Nigeria. Parameters measured were Body Weight (BW), Body Length (BL), Body Girth (BG), Wing Length (WL), Shank Length (SL) and Shank Thickness (ST). Results revealed that there’s a great preponderance of spurred (sI) indigenous Nigerian chickens in Niger state. The gene frequencies of spurred (sI) and spurless (SI+/-) gene in the three administrative zones of Niger State were as follows; zone A: (males, 0.93 vs. 0.07 and females, 0.69 vs. 0.31); zone B: (males, 0.93 vs. 0.07 and females, 0.74 vs. 0.26) and zone C: (males, 0.92 vs. 0.08 and females, 0.87 vs. 0.13), respectively. Spur gene significantly (p<0.05) imparted on all the metric parameters evaluated in the three zones except for BG and SL in zone B which were not significantly (p>0.05) affected by the presence of the gene. Birds from zone C (males and females) performed better than those from the other zones in all the parameters measured. They had better BW (2.28; 1.98), BL (44.79; 41.47), BG (26.41; 25.24), WL (24.83; 23.79), SL (12.04; 11.00) and ST (1.30; 1.20), respectively. Results from the combined analysis showed that spurred females were better than the spurless males in BW, BG, WL and ST. It was concluded that the presence of spur in the local chickens conferred some advantages on the birds’ exhibiting the trait as they performed better than the ones not having it.
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