Breeding Goals For Production Systems Utilising Indigenous Chicken In Kenya

ABSTRACT

Indigenous chicken are mainly kept in subsistence systems and constitute about 80% of

Africa’s poultry flock. Currently, there are no well-defined breeding goals and genetic

improvement programmes for the indigenous chicken are rare. The overall aim of this study

was to develop breeding goals for use in production systems utilising the indigenous chicken.

The specific objectives were to construct a deterministic bio-economic model for the economic

evaluation of production systems utilising indigenous chicken, to identify breeding goal traits

and estimate their economic values under different production circumstances and to determine

the influence of economic values on genetic gain in the breeding goal traits. To construct the

bio-economic model, three production systems were identified based on the level of

intensification and management regime, namely: confined full ration system (CFRS); semiintensive

system (SIS); and free range system (FRS). The model was able to predict liveweight

on every subsequent day starting with the hatching weight as the initial weight and the

average daily gains for the birds, and used these outputs to estimate feed intake. The outputs

from the model included revenue, costs and profitability in the different production systems.

The traits which influenced profitability were identified and considered as potential breeding

goal traits. They included live weight (LW) of pullets (LWp) and cockerels (LWc), egg weight

(EW), hatchability (HTC), fertility (FRT); chick survival rate (CSR), age at first egg (AFE) and

number of eggs per clutch (NeCl). Economic values were derived for each of the traits above.

The AFE and EW had negative economic values in all systems (-14.20, -1.142 and –0.757; -

0.052, -0.045 and -0.045) in CFRS, SIS and FRS respectively. The rest of the traits had

positive economic values in all production systems. In terms of magnitude, semi-intensive

system had high values for FRT and HTC. CSR was the most valuable trait in FRS and SIS

with economic values of +14.114 and +19.227 respectively. The influence of the estimated

economic values on genetic improvement was also assessed using different selection indices.

The first selection index (I) included information on LWc, LWp, EW and CSR whereas the

second selection index (II) included information on AFE, HTC, FRT and NeCl. Economic

response in index I was KSh. 133.31; 66.71 and 105.33 for CFRS, SIS and FRS respectively

and was KSh. 155.95; 20.13 and 13.14 for CFRS, SIS and FRS respectively for the second

index. The economic values were fairly stable to changes in prices of meat and eggs and can be

used to set up improvement programmes for indigenous chicken in Kenya. There was a clear

relationship between the economic values and genetic gain. This study came up with breeding goals appropriate for genetic improvement programmes for indigenous chicken in Kenya