Author(s)

Adamou Guisso Taffa^1*, Salissou Issa², Chaibou Mahamadou¹, Nassim Moula^3,4, Johann Detilleux⁵

¹Department of Animal Production, Agronomy Faculty, Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey, Niamey, Niger.
²Department of Animal Production, National Institute for Agronomic Research of Niger, Niamey, Niger.
³GIGA, Animal Facilities, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium.
⁴Department of Veterinary Management of Animal Resources, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium.
⁵Department of Equine Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium.

The exploitation of industrial strains of chickens in the Sahelian climate of Niger is characterized by a decline in performance and significant costs associated with their maintenance. In contrast, local chickens are well adapted to these environmental conditions but with poor production performance. Genetic selection of these local chickens could improve their productivity. The first step is to determine if the genetic parameters of their growth are high enough to ensure a successful selection strategy. To do so, weekly weights of 69 parents and 119 offspring were followed for 20 weeks. The heritability and genetic correlations of these weights were estimated through the Bayesian approach using the MCMCglmm package on R software. At hatching, weights ranged from 23 to 25 g. At 20 weeks, these weights ranged from 1031 to 1052 g for females and 1308 to 1445 g for males. Heritabilities for hatch weights at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 weeks of age were estimated to be 0.56, 0.31, 0.52, 0.53, 0.52 and 0.48 respectively and all genetic correlations were positive. In particular, weight at 8 weeks of age showed both good heritability (h² = 0.52) and strong, positive genetic correlations with weights at older ages. These results indicate that genetic selection to improve weight at 8 weeks of age would be a good strategy to improve the overall growth performance of these chickens.

Bayesian, Genetic Correlations, Heritability, Local Chicken, MCMCglmm, Weight Gain, Niger

Taffa, A. , Issa, S. , Mahamadou, C. , Moula, N. and Detilleux, J. (2022) Heritability and Genetic Correlation of Niamey’s Local Chicken Growth (Niger). Open Journal of Genetics, 12, 57-68. doi: 10.4236/ojgen.2022.124006.