Production performance and survivability of six dual-purpose breeds of chicken under smallholder farmers' management practices in Nigeria
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7810232/
Ajayi FO, Bamidele O, Hassan WA, Ogundu U, Yakubu A, Alabi OO, Akinsola OM, Sonaiya EB, Adebambo OA. Production performance and survivability of six dual-purpose breeds of chicken under smallholder farmers' management practices in Nigeria. Arch Anim Breed. 2020 Nov 12;63(2):387-408. doi: 10.5194/aab-63-387-2020. PMID: 33473364; PMCID: PMC7810232.
In many developing countries chickens are reared under the free-range, backyard or semi-intensive system as a means of improving the livelihood of the people (Sonaiya, 1990, 2007; Kitalyi, 1998; Guèye, 2000; Kryger et al., 2010; Billah et al., 2013; Yusuf et al., 2014; Alemayehu et al., 2018). A major challenge of smallholder chicken production is the use of local genotypes with a small body size, which offer poor feed quantity and quality resulting in low egg and meat output and high mortality (Yakubu et al., 2007; Mellesse, 2014; Ajayi and Agaviezor, 2016; Sankhyan and Thakur, 2018). A knowledge of the production performance of traits of economic importance is required for formulation of breeding plans aimed at improving the livelihoods of smallholder chicken farmers (Yakubu et al., 2019). Improving genetic potentials of smallholder chicken requires testing different breeds in two or more environments in order to determine the magnitude of genotype × environment interaction (Falconer and Mckay, 1996; Nauta, 2009).
In order to improve the productivity of chicken of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, two foreign-sourced tropically adapted breeds from India (Kuroiler) and France (Sasso) and four locally sourced breeds (FUNAAB Alpha, Noiler, Shika-Brown and Fulani) developed in Nigeria (Bamidele et al., 2019) were tested on-farm for growth, egg production and survivability in five agroecological zones in Nigeria. The study was carried out under the African Chicken Genetic Gains (ACGG) project in Nigeria with the aim of guiding decisions on the choice of appropriate smallholder chicken breeds.