PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF ASEEL CHICKEN UNDER FREE RANGE, SEMI-INTENSIVE AND CONFINEMENT REARING SYSTEMS - M. S. Rehman; A. Mahmud; S. Mehmood; T. N. Pasha; K. Javed; J. Hussain; M. T. Khan (Journal of Animal and Plant Sciences, 2016)
An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of 3 different rearing systems [free range (FR), semi-intensive (SI), and confinement (CF)] on productive production performance in 4 varieties of Aseel chicken [Lakha (LK), Mushki (MS), Peshawari (PW), and Sindhi (SN)]. A total of 168 adult hens were assigned to 12 treatment groups, 3 (rearing systems) × 4 (Aseel varieties) factorial arrangement in 7 randomized complete blocks, replicated 14 times with individual hen in each (42 hens from each variety; 56 hens in each rearing system). Data regarding body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG), uniformity (UF), and livability (LB) were collected fortnightly whereas egg production (EP), egg weight (EW), and egg mass (EM) were recorded on daily basis. The data were analyzed by a two-way ANOVA technique under factorial arrangement. The results manifested the highest (P<0.05) BW (2419.11±30.23), EP (35.90±0.56), EM (202.08±3.66), and LB (98.81±0.93) in CF whereas BWG was found to be the highest in SI (729.82±30.06) system. Among different Aseel varieties, SN hens demonstrated enhanced BW (2433.81±30.46), UF (87.50±5.59), EW (46.60±0.40), EM (208.96±3.20), and better EP (35.91±0.50) than MS and LK whereas PW revealed the highest EP (36.04±0.97) with better UF (79.17±7.68) than MS. Interaction of rearing systems and Aseel varieties showed differences (P<0.05) among means except LB (P>0.05), portraying enhanced BWG in LK (768.57±63.63); improved EP in PW (38.00±1.94); better EW (46.80±0.75), EM (214.12±4.52) in SN under SI whereas only SN showed the highest BW under CF (2566.43±53.20) and maximum UF under FR (100.00±0).
Keywords: journal article; Aseel varieties; Rearing systems; Production performance