Qualitative Morphometeric Characterization of Indigenous Chicken of Gash-Barka Region in Eritrea

Abstract

The study was conducted in three sub-zones of Gash-Barka region of Eritrea from August 2017 to January 2018, to identify and characterize the indigenous chicken based on some phenotypic traits.A total of 111 indigenous chicken owners and 500 indigenous chickens (107 males and 393 females) aged more than six months were considered under field condition to describe ten qualitative traits following FAO 2012 standard chicken descriptors and 150 fresh eggs were used for determination of external egg quality parameters. The parameters examined include plumage color, head shape, comb shape, comb color, eye color, beak color, earlobe color, feather distribution, shank color, spur presence, egg shell color, egg weight, egg length (mm), egg width (mm) and egg shape index (%). The results revealed that most frequent plumage colors are brown and black (22.2%), mixture of brown (17.6%) and black and yellow (15%) plumage colors. Plumage color of indigenous chicken in this study was highly significantly (P<0.001) different between sub-zones and sex. Similarly, indigenous chicken possessed flat plain head shape (73.6%), single comb shape (56%), red comb color (97.4%), red eye color (37.6%), brown beak color (40.2%) and white with red earlobe color (45.2%) for head morphology while 88.6% had normal body feather distribution (88.6%), white shank color (27.6%) and without spur presence (79.8%). External egg quality characteristics were not significantly (p≥0.05) different across the sub-zones with over all mean for egg weight (44.22±0.42 gm), egg length (52.72±0.2mm) and egg width (39±0.14mm).Overall mean percentage of egg shape index was 74.01% in the study sub-zones and regarding eggshell color, over-all mean proportion of white eggshell color (71.3%) was most frequent color followed by cream (28%) and brown (0.7%) eggshell colors. Phonotypic variations were observed among the indigenous chicken populations and this information could be useful in an appropriate management, breeding program for selection, utilization and conservation of Eritrean chicken genetic resources.