GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND PHENOTYPIC CORRELATIONS OF ARBOR ACRES PLUS AND MARSHALL CHICKEN STRAINS REARED IN NASARAWA STATE

Abstract

weight and linear body traits of Arbor Acres Plus and Marshall chicken strains. The birds were reared under two management systems (without access or with access to pasture) in Nasarawa State, Nigeria in an 8-week trial. A total of two hundred (200) day-old chicks (DOC) comprising equal number of Arbor Acres Plus (Amo Brand) (100) and Marshall broilers (100) were used for the experiment. Arbor Acres Plus was sourced from Amo Farms, Awe, Oyo State, while Marshall Strain was purchased at Zartech Farm, Ibadan, Nigeria. One hundred (100) randomly selected birds were kept indoors without access to pasture while 100 birds were kept indoors but had access to pasture (Mucuna pruriens). A 2x2 factorial experiment in a completely randomized design (CRD) was adopted. Each treatment group was replicated two times. There were 25 birds per replicate. The birds were randomly allocated to the experimental pens in a completely randomized design based on their strain and housing condition. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure was used to analyse the data on growth traits and linear body parameters using SPSS (2020) analytical package.. Results obtained showed that positive and significant phenotypic correlations were observed between linear body traits and body weight of Arbor Acres and Marshall studied, which indicates that an improvement in one trait could lead to a simultaneous improvement in the other provided the environmental factors are negligible. Body weight (BW) and Linear body measurements (body length, wing length, drumstick length, breast width, shank length, keel length and neck length) had a significant increase as age (weeks) increased for the Arbor Acres and Marshall Chicken respectively. Final body weights for Arbor Acres (1750) and Marshall Chicken (1895) differed significantly (P<0.05) across the weeks. Positive phenotypic correlations of body weight and linear body traits ranged from 0.437 – 0.960 (week 4, 8) and for Arbor Acres broiler strain and 0.532 – 0.951 (week 4, 8).