Egg is a reproduction tool for chickens and valuable food source for humans. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of egg weight (EW) on egg quality traits such as egg length (EL), egg diameter (ED), yolk weight (YW), albumen weight (AW), shell weight (SW), shell index (SI), yolk ratio (YR), albumen ratio (AR) and shell ratio (SR). Potchefstroom Koekoek layer genotype eggs (n = 200) were used. Pearson correlation and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for analysis. Correlation results indicated that egg weight had a statistical significant correlation (P < 0.05) with egg quality traits. Egg weight displayed a positive significant correlation with EL (0.82), AW (0.67) and SW (0.62), respectively. The findings suggest that EL, AW and SW might be used to improve EW of Potchefstroom Koekoek chicken genotype. ANOVA results showed that egg weight had a statistical significant difference (P < 0.05) with egg quality traits except albumen ratio and yolk ratio (P > 0.05). Moreover, the findings revealed that small eggs weight had a longer egg length, yolk weight, shell weight, shell ratio and albumen weight than medium and large eggs. Large eggs had a higher egg diameter and shell index. Keywords: Albumen weight, egg length, large egg, medium egg, small egg, shell weight

Authors' Contribution MA, MM, AM and AIA executed methodology, collected data, did initial analysis and wrote initial draft. MA, SH and SM did formal analysis and revised draft. SRK, AIA, KA and AMQ conceived the idea, validated findings and revised manuscript.

Identification of livestock farmers’ breeding practices and morphological characterization of livestock are the important first steps to the successful implementation of any breeding programme. Community-based breeding programme (CBBP) has gained attention as a promising method for the genetic improvement of livestock but lacks information on donkey breeding. The study was conducted to identify donkey farmers’ breeding practices and donkey morphological characterization in three purposely selected villages (Thorne, Archibalt and Genau) located in Blouberg Local Municipality, Limpopo province of South Africa. Questionnaire survey method was used to collect the data from twenty-one donkey farmers while body weight and seventeen morphological traits were measured for the morphological characterization from seventy-four donkeys. Descriptive statistics and index values were computed to describe donkey breeding practices. Chi-square statistics were used to compare categorical variables among villages. General Linear Model procedure was used to compare morphological characteristics of donkeys among villages. The results revealed that there was no statistical different (P>0.05) observed on socio-economic characteristics of donkey farmers except on education level (P<0.05) among villages. Purpose of keeping donkeys, type of donkey breed kept, donkey coat colours, mating systems, reasons for culling, mating seasons and selection criterions were not significantly different (P>0.05) among villages. The most common trait preferences of donkey farmers among the surveyed villages were body size and growth rate in breeding males while in breeding females were body size, twining ability and mothering ability. The results indicated that in all the eighteen measured traits only four showed a significant difference (P<0.05) among the villages and some were significantly correlated with body weight (P<0.05). The results of this study will serves as basis for the development and implementation of CBBPs for donkey farmers at Blouberg Local Municipality of South Africa.