Body weights and growth rates in indigenous chicken breeds of India

SUMMARY A native chicken population has many desirable characteristics such as hardiness, adaptability to the particular agro-climatic condition, better disease tolerance and a specific flavour of meat and eggs. They have better conversion efficiency in converting agricultural by-products and wastes into high-quality animal protein. Efforts are being made to preserve and genetically improve native fowl for growth performance, to develop improved chicken varieties for backyard poultry farming and to make them more productive in the present scenario. Therefore, the present study was carried out to evaluate registered Indian indigenous chicken breeds to discuss variations in body weight (BW) and growth rate in experimental or field conditions. The BWs of male birds of different Indian indigenous chicken breeds at 12th, 16th, 20th, 40th and 72nd week ranged from 528.80 ± 16.70 g to 842.78 ± 19.30 g, 957.57 ± 5.66 to 1181.83 ± 18.18 g, 1465.93 ± 21.35 g to 1841 ± 20.7 g, 1478.68 ± 8.63 g to 2737 ± 50.8 g and 1620 ± 16 g to 3794 ± 20.8 g, respectively. Their BW variation may be due to their evolution under different agro-climatic conditions. Despite their slow growth rate, they are well known for their suitability in the local environment as well as their usefulness for social and economic purposes. Their productivity can be maximised by utilising these data in the breeding programme along with improving environmental factors to enhance their merit under the niche market.