Studies on Some Productive Traits in Norfa Chickens

Abstract

The current experiment had been carried out at the Poultry Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Minoufiya University, Shebin El-Kom, Egypt in the period of 2012 to 2014 for two generations to investigate the productive performance of Norfa strain as an indigenous Egyptian laying strain. A total of 528 birds (396 females + 132 males) of Norfa chickens were used. Artificial insemination was used as a mating system with sexual ratio 1 male / 3 females, and relatives mating was avoided. At hatching, all chicks were wing banded and pedigreed. Chicks were fed a starter diet containing 18.05% crude protein (CP) till 8 th week of age and from 9 th to 16 th week of age, chickens were fed a growing diet containing 14.01% CP then, pullets were fed at production period a layer ration containing 17.46% CP. Cockerels were separated from pullets in brooding house at the 8 th week of age and pullets were moved to individual cages in laying house at 16 th week of age. A "step down-step up" lighting program was used durino-g brooding, rearing and production periods. Age at sexual maturity (ASM), body weight at sexual maturity (BWSM), body weight at maturity (BWM), egg weight at sexual maturity (EWSM), egg weight at maturity (EWM), egg number in first 90 days of laying (EN90d) and egg number till 42 weeks of age (EN42WK) were individually recorded for each laying hen. Results can be summarized as follows:1-In the first generation, Norfa layers had late ASM (193.15d), reasonable egg weights (37.99 and 46.11 g for EWSM and EWM, respectively) and low egg numbers (28.34 and 33.48 eggs for EN90d and EN42wk, respectively) with light body weights (979.70 and 1078.42 g for BWSM and BWM, respectively). 2-In the second generation, the overall average of ASM of Norfa females was 179.30 d. Average of BWSM was 919.25 g, while BWM recorded in the studied flock of Norfa layers equaled to 1073.71 g. The mean of EWSM was 32.0 g and the mean value of EWM was 45.62 g. Egg number means obtained in the second season were 39.0 and 48.02 eggs for EN90d and EN42wk, respectively.