GENETIC PARAMETERS AND CORRELATIONS OF EARLY WEIGHT TRAITS IN A NIGERIAN INDIGENOUS HEAVY X LIGHT ECOTYPES POPULATION OF CHICKENS

Background: Improvement of the Nigerian indigenous chickens is desirable because of its socioeconomic important. Objective: To estimate the heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlations among body weight, body length, wing length and shank length of the mating of heavy ecotype cocks with light ecotype hens of Nigerian indigenous chickens. Methodology: The mating design was such that one heavy ecotype cock mated with 10 light ecotype hens in twenty replicate pens. The mating produced 752 chicks from ten batches of hatch. The estimates of variance components were obtained from paternal half sib analysis using the average information restricted maximum likelihood of BLUPF90 family of programs. Results: The heritability of body weight ranged from 0.20 to 0.44 from 6 to 12 weeks of age. Similarly, the heritability of body length, wing length and shank length ranged from 0.39 to 0.63, 0.51 to 0.71 and 0.31 to 0.54 respectively from 6 to 12 weeks of age. The genetic correlations among the early growth traits measured were negative to positive in magnitude and ranged from -0.99 to 0.66 while the phenotypic correlations ranged from -0.15 to 0.91. Implication: The results imply that early growth traits of light and heavy ecotype Nigerian indigenous chicken could be improved through mass selection. Conclusion: It is concluded from this study that the heritability of early growth traits were moderate to high in magnitude and the genetic and phenotypic correlations mostly positive.