Local Fulani chicken shows exotic potential for meat, egg production
To provide more meat and eggs, the animal protein availability in Nigeria no doubt has to be improved. Currently, farmers depend mainly on imported parent stocks for the production of healthy and highly productive birds. But there is a need to also step up the productivity of indigenous poultry stocks in order to provide more meat and eggs for the teeming population.
A recent research carried out by Sola Ojo of the department of Animal Production, University of Ilorin exemplified how the productivity of an indigenous bird can be stepped up. Using the Fulani Ecotype (FE) chicken, an indigenous chicken typical to the Fulani tribe in Nigeria, she was able to step up the performance of the bird by cross-breeding with exotic birds – the foreign breeds.
The Fulani Ecotype chicken was crossed with the Hubbard Broiler (HB), an exotic bird with high productivity in meat production and and Dominant Black (DB), an exotic bird prolific in egg production and the resultant progenies were assessed for some production traits.
The results indicated improvements in some production traits of the cross-bred Fulani Ecotype when the cross bred progenies (offspring) were compared with the parents (cross-breeds) and the pure bred line under the same management condition.
So, it was concluded that the Fulani Ecotype chicken had great potential for genetic improvement for both meat and egg production, and the study indicated that the Fulani Ecotype chicken can be upgraded using the Hubbard male line for meat production and the Dominant Black female line for egg production.
Moshood Yinka Belewu, professor of animal production at the University of Ilorin said if adopted and produced on large scale, this hybrid- the cross-bred Fulani Ecotype bird will help the country reduce the foreign exchange spent on importation of parent stocks.
“This cross-bred Ecotype also has better chances of standing the test of time and climate change because it is indigenous to our environment and can resist diseases better and its cost of feeding can be lower.”
In addition, Belewu says the imported parent stocks can only be imported by licensed operators, so they are sometimes scarce and therefore very expensive whereas the Fulani Ecotype is indigenous to the Nigerian environment.
This research titled Genetic Evaluation of Fulani Ecotype Chicken for Meat and Egg Production was carried out by Ojo for her doctoral thesis.
The thesis was adjudged the best Nigerian University Doctoral Thesis in Agriculture (2010) by the National Universities Commission. The award ceremony was held this month in Abuja.
Onallo Akpa, an executive of Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) estimated commercial production at N51.2 billion (US$3.2billion) and rural family production at N320 billion with 553,000metric tonnes of eggs and 708,000metric tonnes of broiler meat being produced as at 2011. Though local poultry production is increasing, rising by about 20 percent in the last one year, there is still the need to further step up production as domestic production has not yet met up with total demand.
By: OLUYINKA ALAWODE