PHENOTYPIC CHARACTERIZATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF FARMERS BREEDING OBJECTIVE TRAITS OF INDIGENOUS CHICKEN ECOTYPES AROUND DIRE DAWA, ETHIOPIA

This study was conducted to phenotypically characterize and identify farmers’ breeding objective traits of indigenous chicken ecotypes around Dire Dawa. In total, 120 households participated in the interviews, which were conducted using a structured questionnaire and for phenotypic characterization, four hundred eighty individual chickens (163 female and 77 male from midland, 87 male and 153 female from lowland) were characterized under field conditions to describe qualitative and quantitative traits following standard chicken descriptors. Descriptive statistics (frequency procedure), Generalized Linear Model (GLM) procedures, and multivariate statistics were used to analyze the data. The result revealed that the mean flock size of chickens per household was 13.76 and 10.3 (ranging from 2-25) in lowland and midland agroecology, respectively. Farmers' primary reason for culling was poor productivity chickens followed by old age. Furthermore, plumage colour, sicken, and bad temperament of hens and cocks. Sale for income (1st), egg production (2nd), and home consumption (3rd) were the purposes for which farmers rear chickens. Source of income ranked (1st), home consumption (2nd), and hatching chickens (3rd) were purposes of egg production. The effective population size (Ne) estimated in lowland, and midland altitudes were 4.66, and 3.88, respectively whereas the rate of inbreeding per generation (∆F) was 0.10, and 0.12, respectively. Hens are predominantly selected on the bases of egg production, followed by mothering ability, hatchability, large body size, colour, and brooding ability while cocks are predominantly selected based on body size, plumage colour, comb type, disease tolerance, growth, and fertility. Most of the local chickens had single (77.29 %,) comb type followed by rose (9.79 %,) double, buttery 6.88%, and 6.4% overall proportion agroecology. The average body weight of local hens in lowland and midland ecotypes were1.29±0.02 and 1.26±0.02kg respectively, while the respective values for mature males were 1.55±0.02 and 1.62±0.03 kg.