Growth Performances, Carcass and Egg Characteristics of the Local Chicken and its First Generation Reciprocal Crossbreds with an Exotic Strain in Cameroon

摘要

With the aim of improving the productivity of local chicken, reciprocal crossbreeding experiments were carried out to compare the performances of Hubbard rooster x local chicken (HL) and local rooster x Hubbard female (LH) to those of pure Hubbard (HH) and local (LL) breeds simultaneously reared in the same conditions in the Western Highlands of Cameroon. The main result showed that the effect of genetic type has significantly influenced the studied parameters. The analysis of egg characteristics revealed that the HH and LH crossbreds produced eggs of statistically comparable weight (P>0.05) of 70.28 ± 0.62g and 69.51 ± 0.58g, respectively. These eggs proved to be heavier and of significantly higher measurements (P0.05) than the three others genetic type throughout the study period and had the best performances (P>0.05) from the first to the seventh week for all considered parameters. The final weight of HH was 1504.69 ± 88.07g, followed by LH (762.78 ± 122.68 g), then HL (451.17 ± 62.13 g) and finally LL (422.31 ± 20.94 g). On the other hand, LH chicks had better mean daily weight gain (31.34 ± 16.78) and feed conversion (2.86 ± 0.06) than LL (4.19 ± 0.57) and HL (12, 08 ± 5.29). But whatever the period, HH chicks made the best feed conversion (2.04 ± 0.07 and 2.58 ± 0.17 for the starting and growing period), carcass yield and heart weight (72.28 ±1.13 % and 12.2 ± 2.33 g). On the contrary, there was no significant difference for the liver and crop weight (12.20 ± 3.65 g; 13.56 ± 2.65 g and 10.07 ± 3.16 g; 12.00 ± 1.77 g) respectively for HL and LL.