Fertility and hatchability of eggs and growth performance of mini- incubator hatched indigenous chicken in rural areas of Bangladesh

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the performance of mini-hatchery of Indigenous chicken set under four villages of Jhenaigati upazilla of Sherpur district in Bangladesh. A total of 1070 eggs from Indigenous chicken were collected in 4 batches and 628 chicks were hatched artificially. Data were recorded on fertility, hatchability, body weight of chicks from week 1 (BWWK1) to week 17 (BWWK17). Least square means were obtained using SAS GLM and mean comparisons were performed with Duncan’s MultipleRange Test. Fertility (%), hatchability (%) and mortality (%) of indigenous chicken eggs were 70.81, 77.52, 19.63, respectively. Comparable fertility and hatchability of Indigenous chicken eggs were found in this study. Body weight of male birds at third, fifth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth weeks were significantly higher than females as expected. Male birds were found heavier than the female birds in this study and artificially hatched birds grew better up to 11 weeks of age. The coal brooding system was superior to electric and natural brooding. Hand mixed feed gave better growth of birds than commercial feed and scavenging feed resources. Better growth of farm 2 was observed and replication of management system of farm 2 could be advised for other farmers to get a better growth. Batch, farm, brooding system and feeding system were found to be contributed to significant (P<0.05) differences in the body weight of birds at various weeks of their age. These results indicated that standardization of the management systems is required before implementation of mini hatcheries for incubation of Indigenous chicken eggs in rural areas of Bangladesh. Tropical Agricultural Research Vol. 26 (3): 528 – 536 (2015)

Keywords

• artificial hatching, fertility and hatchability, growth performance, indigenous chicken