Determination of best fitted regression model for estimation of body weight in Nigerian indigenous chickens

Abstract

Farmers rearing indigenous chickens in the villages or peri-urban settlements often have problems of accurately estimating body weight of their chicken. Therefore, the study was conducted to determine the best-fitted regression model for estimating body weight of Nigerian indigenous chickens using different linear body measurement. Data on body weight and body measurements recorded on 137 Nigeria indigenous chickens consisting of 57cocks and 80 hens were used for the study. Parameters measured were Body weight (BW), Body length (BL), Wing length (WL), Wing span (WS), Drum stick (DS) Shank length (SL), Body length (BL), Breast girth (BG) and Keel length (KL). Body weight was regressed on body measurements by forward, backward, stepwise and full model regression analysis, to determine the combination of body dimension for each sex that explains variation in the dependent variable for male and female chickens at 20th week of age. The outcome of the study showed that BW= -2223.73 +33.67SL +11.62DS +17.83BG +56.87BL +79.13KL and BW= -1608.61 +13.21WL +20.51BG +69.57BL are the best fitted regression model for predicting body weights of Nigerian indigenous cock and hen, respectively at 20 weeks of age.