Agricultural and Biological Research

Egg production performance of three strains of laying hens kept in floor pens

Mebratu Yigzaw*, Solomon Demeke and Wasihun Hassen

Genetic limitation is one of the major bottlenecks for the development of the poultry production and the expansion of the commercial poultry production is limited by inadequate supply of high performing chicken breeds in Ethiopia. Research system is currently focused to solve this gap by introducing the best productive breeds that can adapt and perform in Ethiopia. This experimental trial was done out to study the evaluation of egg production performance of lohman brown, novo brown and dominant Sussex final hybrid layers under the objective condition of Jimma. One hundred fifty of each of breed of layers obtained from Debre Zeit research center and was placed at Jimma university poultry farm on standard commercial layer’s ration in completely randomized design with three replicates. Finally, all the data collected on performance of the experimental breeds of chickens were subjected to statistical analysis. There was no significant difference (P<0.05) between the three breeds tested in age at the first egg, even if Lohman Brown tended to lay comparatively earlier (137 days). The hen day egg production rate and egg weight of dominant Sussex was better than other two breeds. In summary, the results of this experiment indicated that the three breed of chicken have well performed (except the adaptive potential of dominant Sussex chickens) under Jimma condition in most of the economically important production traits studied. However, comparative evaluation of the egg quality and reproductive performance of the three breeds seems to be the future direction of research under objective condition of Jimma.