BODY WEIGHT AS A DISCRIMINANT FACTOR AMONG THREE BREEDS OF THE NIGERIAN LOCAL CHICKEN

Abstract

The body weights (BWT) of three different breeds of the Nigerian local chicken were monitored in order to ascertain their validity as markers and genotype discriminants. 139 day old local chickens comprising of 45, 42 and 52 naked neck, frizzle and normal genotypes respectively generated from 36 adult local chickens of three different genotypes, were used in a 24 – weeks experiment. Results showed that the normal genotypes had significantly (p<0.05) highest mean values and were superior to the frizzle and naked neck genotypes. Breed centroid obtained were opposing (-.386, .372 and .564) BWT, which indicate that the genotypes were different and were rightly classified as different varieties/breeds. The classification results indicated that 49.9% and 60.8% based on BWT of original cases for naked neck frizzle and normal, respectively were correctly classified. The results of this study indicate that the naked neck, frizzle and normal genotypes are distinctly different from each other and could be classified as different varieties using body weight as a discriminating factor..