Phenotypic Characterization of indigenous Chicken Ecotypes in Northwollo, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Agrarian Studies, Bahir Dar University, course: animal genetics and breeding, language: English, abstract: ABSTRACT Phenotypic characterization of indigenous chicken ecotypes was conducted in North Wollo from January 2011 to May 2012 with the objectives of characterizing indigenous chicken and their production system. Simultaneously, identification of development intervention for improved utilization of chicken genetic resources was also identified. In the first part of data collection, one focused group discussion per agro-ecological zones was held. Then, administration of well-structured questionnaire and morphometric measurement were employed. Measured quantitative traits of chicken among the three altitudes were analyzed by linear model of SAS 2002 for male and female chickens separately. Subsequently, mean value of each traits were compared using Tukey's mean comparison method. Multivariate analysis of principal component analysis, canonical discriminant, step-wise discriminant and clustering analysis was performed by SPSS 19.0 for male and female chicken ecotype separately. Nechi (17.6%), Tikur (12.6%) and Key (10.8%) plumage colour were found dominantly all over the study area. Findings of the focus group discussion revealed that there were morphologically differences among chickens of high altitude, mid altitude and low altitude study areas. Similarly, findings from the semi-structured questioner revealed that indigenous chicken ecotypes are dual-purpose. The critical constraints of scavenging chicken production were disease (60.13%) predators (20.59%) and feed shortage (19.28%). Number of egg lay/clutch (37.91%) and plumage colour (37.58%) were the major preferred trait by the farmers in the study area. For qualitative and quantitative study, 715 sample chickens were recorded by category of agro-ecology. Linear measurements on six traits were taken from 210 mature male and 305 mature female chickens. The overall mean body weight of indigenous male and female chickens was 1500.97gm and 1253.36gm respectively. The overall age at sexual maturity for male and female was 24.25 ± 0.04 and 23.84 ± 0.05 weeks respectively. There was highly significant difference (p<0.0001) in egg production/hen/clutch across altitudes. Based on linear model analysis and result of focus group discussion, observed morphological variation and multivariate analysis, three chicken population found in North Wollo was categorized in to high altitude, mid altitude and low altitude chicken ecotypes.