Abstract:
The study was conducted in three sub-zones (Shambqo, Molqi and Logo-Anseba) of Gash-Barka region of Eritrea with objective of assessing the productive and reproductive performance of indigenous chickens (IC) of Eritrea kept under traditional/ village condition. A total of 111 chicken rearing smallholder farmers were interviewed to collect required information using a semi-structured pre-tested questionnaire. The study revealed that, IC production appears to be an important activity in all surveyed sub-zones. This is indicated by the high IC holding per household that is 19.3, 13.3 and 15 for Shambqo, Molqi and Logo-Anseba, respectively. Furthermore, 43.2% of these households rear more than 15 indigenous chickens with sex ratio of four hens to one cock. The effective population size and the rate of inbreeding calculated were 4.87 and 0.11, respectively. The investigation revealed that IC was reared mainly for egg production and earning cash income. The IC production system was a backyard extensive production system. IC ecotypes were managed mainly on scavenging with regular feed supplementation. The average age of male at first mating was 5.46 ± 0.08 months while female at first egg was 6.08 ±0.07 months. The number of clutch per hen per year, eggs per clutch and total eggs produced per hen per year were 3.38±0.05, 11.53±0.27 and 38.88±1.06 eggs, respectively. Significant (p<0.05) differences were found among the sub-zone in all the above traits except for cockerels age at first mating. The hatchability and survival rate of chicks were found to be 76.87% and 48.6%, respectively.
