Research Article
Cosmas Chikezie Ogbu, Tule Jor
Abstract
The study was carried out to evaluate the egg production performance of heavy (HBW) and light (LBW) body weight chickens housed in cages and deep litter and fed commercial feed (CF) or locally formulated feed (LF). One hundred and sixty pullets at point of lay (18 weeks of age, 80/genotype) were used for the study. During the growing phase (8-18 weeks), pullets of each genotype were fed either CF or LF growers mash. Thereafter, birds of each genotype and feed type were assigned to either deep litter (10 birds/pen) or battery cage (individual bird cages). Next, birds that received CF and LF growers mash were assigned to CF and LF layers mash, respectively. Water was provided ad libitum. Data collected included age at first egg (AFE), body weight at first egg (BWFE), weight of first egg (WFE), egg weight (EW), egg number (AEN), and egg mass (AEM). Comparison between treatments was done using independent samples t – test. Result showed significant (P ˂ 0.05) genotypic effects on the measured traits irrespective of feed type, and housing system. Housing significantly (P ˂ 0.05) influenced BWFE, AEN, and AEM as well as AFE, BWFE, AEN, and AEM in LBW and HBW birds, respectively while feed type significantly (P ˂ 0.05) affected AFE, BWFE, AEN, and AEM and BWFE and AEM among LBW and HBW birds reared in deep litter, respectively. For birds reared in battery cages, feed type significantly (P ˂ 0.05) affected BWFE, and AEN in LBW birds but only BWFE for HBW birds. It was concluded that HBW chickens performed better than the LBW chickens in most of the parameters while battery cage and local feed were better than deep litter and commercial feed, respectively in enhancing the performance of both genotypes.