Fertility and hatchability potentials of ShikaBrown® chickens and effect of body weight and age of chicken on egg quality traits in southwestern, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess the reproductive performance and the effect of body weight and age on external egg quality  traits of ShikaBrown® (SS-98, SG-98 and SB-98) chickens. Six hundred ShikaBrown® chickens fertile eggs were sourced, incubated and 21 weeks old ShikaBrown® layers were used for studying some external egg quality traits. Data collected were  subjected to Analysis of Variance (SAS 9); Univariate was applied to test the effects of age and body weight on  external egg  quality traits of the birds; where significant differences occurred, the means were separated by Duncan Multiple Range test. The dam (SS-98) parent stock had higher fertility (95.9%) while ShikaBrown® (SB-98) commercial layers had highest hatchability (89.9%). There was significant effect of age and body weight on all the external egg quality traits (p<0.05) considered in this  study except egg shape index, which was not significantly affected (p>0.05) by body weight. The external egg quality traits  progressed with corresponding increase in the age and body weight of the ShikaBrown® (SB-98) layers. On the basis of the  recorded high values for both reproduction and egg quality traits, the ShikaBrown® parent lines and commercial layers should be made readily available to the commercial poultry farms.

Keywords: Egg, Hatchability, Fertility, External quality traits, ShikaBrown® chicken genotypes (SS-98, SG-98, SB-98).