Relationships between carcass traits and offal components in local poultry populations (gallus gallus) of Benin

Abstract

Objectives: The current work was carried out to determine the relationships between live weight, carcass traits and the offal components traits in Holli, Fulani, Sahoue, North and South indigenous chicken ecotypes of Benin.
Methodology and results: 260 indigenous chickens of which 52 cockerels of each ecotype were slaughtered at 24 weeks old and used for carcass and offal composition study. Data collected were live weight, carcass weight, Carcass yields and the weights of breast, thigh-drumstick, wings, back, liver, gizzard, heart, tarsi, neck and head. It comes out from this study that in North chickens, except heart weight and carcass yields, slaughter weight was highly and positively correlated with hot carcass weight, breast weight, thigh-drumstick weight, wing weight, tarsi weight (P<0.001; 0.62 C r C 0.99), weakly and positively associated to the heart weight (P<0.05; r = 0.44) but negatively correlated with the carcass drip loss (P<0.01, r= -0.51). The breast weight was moderately and positively correlated with gizzard weight (P<0.01, r= 0.61) while the thigh-drumstick and wing weights were highly and positively associated with gizzard weight (P<0.001, 0.67 C r C 0.78). Similar relationships were also observed in Holli, Fulani and Sahoue ecotypes between live weight, carcass traits and offal components except carcass yields and the weights of heart, liver, head and tarsi. Contrary to North, Holli, Fulani and Sahoue chickens, heart weight and liver weight in South chicken weren’t associated with the other carcass traits. However, the drip loss was negatively correlated with all other carcass traits evaluated in all chicken ecotypes. Holli and Fulani chickens were characterized by higher live weight, hot carcass weight, carcass yield, breast weight, wing weight, rest of carcass weight, neck weight, head  weight, tarsi weight, thigh-drumstick percentage, wing percentage, and heavier offal components (liver, gizzard, heart); whereas North and Sahoue chickens were characterized by higher head percentage, heart percentage, and rest of carcass percentage, while South chickens were only characterized by higher neck percentage and breast percentage.
Conclusion and application of finding: The carcass and offal traits appeared to be some good indicators of live weight.

Key words: Body composition, correlation, indigenous chicken, principal components analysis.