Growth Performance, Mortality and Carcass Yield Evaluation of Pure and Reciprocal Crosses between Sasso and Wassache Chickens

Abstract BackgroundThe indigenous chicken production has become an integral part of the smallholder farming systems in Africa, this practice helps in diversifying household income and providing food for the rural community. Products from the indigenous chickens are preferred due to its taste and flavour, however, characterized by small body size and slow productive performance, meat production from this chicken has not met the high demand in Togo. Crossbreeding using exotic breeds can improve productivity of the indigenous chickens without sacrificing its genetic potentials. This study was aimed at improving the Wassache chicken, F1 generation of the crosses between the Wassache and Sasso chickens were simultaneously evaluated for growth traits, mortality and carcass yield in a pure and reciprocal crossbreeding experiment. Data on body weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, and mortality were collected on 400 birds for 12 weeks. On the 12th week of study, 20 birds from each genotype were dissected to determine the carcass yield. Feed intake, body weight and carcass weights were measured using a weighing scale while mortality and dressing percentage were calculated in percentages. Data collected was analyzed using Minitab 19.ResultsThe comparison between the crosses revealed significant (p < 0.05) effect of genotype on growth parameters and carcass traits. Higher significant (p < 0.05) values were reported for SS genotype in all parameters studied with a lower mortality rate Likewise, the reciprocal crosses showed higher performance in growth and carcass traits lower mortality rates next to the pure Sasso. However, Feed conversion ratio and dressing percentage of the pure Sasso and the hybrids did not differ significantly (p  0.05) except except for hatch weight, gizzard and mortality where the WS genotype performed better than SW.ConclusionThe outcome of this study encourages the crossbreeding of Wassache and Sasso chicken for improved meat production of the local chicken, this will give a greater advantage in breeding programs in this region.