Summary
The aim of this study was to determine the egg production potentials of four different indigenous chicken breeds in South Africa:
Potchefstroom Koekoek, Venda, Ovambo and Naked Neck. The White Leghorn breed was used as the control. The egg production
potentials were evaluated over two consecutive production cycles of 52 weeks (used as replicates). Data were collected at the experimental
farm of the Agriculture Research Council at Irene. Treatment means were separated using Fisher’s protected t-test least significant
difference at the 5 percent level of significance and the percentage mortality rate by means of a row by column chi-square test. No
significant differences were observed between breeds on the mean age to the production of the first egg. The White Leghorn was
superior ( p ≤ 0.05) to all four of the indigenous breeds for the mean number of eggs and percentage hen-housed egg production produced
per production cycle. The Potchefstroom Koekoek was also superior ( p ≤ 0.05) to the other three indigenous breeds for these
parameters. There was no difference between the Ovambo and Naked Neck breeds. The percentage mortality rate for the White
Leghorn (39.5 percent) was significantly ( p ≤ 0.05) different from that of the Venda, Ovambo and Potchefstroom Koekoek (22.2 percent).
No differences were observed among the Potchefstroom Koekoek, Venda, Ovambo and Naked Neck (32.3 percent) or between
the White Leghorn and Naked Neck with regard to the mean percentage mortality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:tut/oai:encore.tut.ac.za:d1001197 |
| Date | 26 April 2010 |
| Creators | Grobbelaar, J.A.N, Sutherland, B, Molalakgotla, NM |
| Publisher | Animal Genetic Resources |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | |
| Rights | © Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations |
| Relation | Animal Genetics |
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