Improvement of PD-4 (Aseel), an indigenous chicken, for growth and production traits

Abstract

Backyard poultry production plays a vital role in providing animal protein at affordable and sustainable manner. Growth and production potential of indigenous chicken need to be improved through selective breeding to enhance the productivity of backyard farming. PD-4 birds (Aseel, indigenous breed) were subjected to selection for higher body weight over eight generations. Study investigated effect of selection on the performance of PD-4 birds with respect to economic traits. There was significant improvement in body weight and shank length at 8 weeks of age. Egg production up to 40 weeks had improved by 19.1 eggs. Egg weight at 28, 32, 36 and 40 weeks of age improved by 0.8, 1.3, 1.7 and 1.3 g respectively. Age at sexual maturity had declined by 14.2 days. There was no significant change in fertility and hatchability traits. Survivors’ egg production up to 72 weeks of age was 156.5±2.79 eggs while hen day and hen housed egg production were 144.9 and 137.5 eggs respectively. Egg weight consistently improved from 35.13 g at age at first egg to 48.07 g at 40 weeks and to 49.63 g at 72 weeks of age. The study demonstrated that indigenous chickens could be improved for body weight and egg production without affecting other economic traits and improved PD-4 variety has the potential to be used as improved dual purpose indigenous chicken variety for low input backyard poultry farming.