Breeding Practices and Trait Preferences of Indigenous Chicken Farmers at Madiga Village, Polokwane Local Municipality, South Africa

Chicken farmers play a role in the social and economic state of their villages (Chebo and Nigussie, 2016). They reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition and create jobs and generate income in their respective villages (Nigussie, 2011). Chicken farmers in South Africa utilize both indigenous and commercial breeds and they mostly integrate indigenous breeds in extensive system (Manyelo et al., 2020). According to Mujyambere (2021), communal chicken farmers have limited knowledge in livestock genetic improvements which supresses their chicken production. This study, therefore, focused on investigating breeding practices and trait preferences of communal farmers in Madiga village. Most rural communities use indigenous chicken breeds that mostly survive on disposed feeds (Hailu et al., 2014). Indigenous chicken breeds are well suited for a wide variety of environmental factors, which among many are extreme tolerance to diseases, adaptable to stress-causing agents in the form of high local temperatures and predators (Kassa et al., 2020). However, indigenous chicken farmers have low production resulting from limited knowledge in livestock genetic improvements (Mujyambere, 2021). The understanding of breeding practices and traits preferences of the communal farmers is the bottom-up approach where livestock specialists assist farmers to identify and understand their production challenges before designing an improvement program (Nandolo et al., 2016). Developing community-based breeding programmes will help to assess selection methods and traits preferred by the farmers, middlemen and consumers to confirm the presence of the genotype carrying those traits (Chebo and Nigussie, 2016). Hence the objectives of this study were to identify the socio-economic status of the chicken keepers with breeding practices, production systems and trait preferences of idigenous chickens reared at Madiga village, Limpopo province.

The study was conducted during 2022 in a small village called Madiga located within Polokwane Municipality, Limpopo province, South Africa. The village is about 27 km away from Polokwane and a few kilometres from Mankweng Hospital. The altitude of the village is around 1260m and the latitude is 23°46'57"S and longitude is 29°45'55"E (Geoview.info, 2022). Madiga village has the highest mean temperature of 27°C in January and lowest mean temperature of 19°C in June. Cross-sectional study design was used to conduct this research. Questionnaires were used to perform the cross-sectional study design. Madiga village was purposively selected as a study area due to its many households keeping chickens. Simple random sampling was used to identify 38 out of 62 chicken farmers to be interviewed. This sampling technique was used because it is simple and unbiased (West, 2016). Cochran formula was used to calculate the sample size.
Cochran formula: 
   
Where,
n = Sample size.
e = Acceptable sample error.
P = Population proportion.
Q = 1-P
Z = Standard error.
       
Data about the breeding practices, production systems and trait preferences of chickens reared at Madiga Village was collected from each individual chicken keeper by interviewing them using a questionnaire (Shishay et al., 2016). The questions drafted in the questionnaire were based on farmer’s socio-economic status, breeding practices and selection criteria. The questionnaire was translated into the local language (Sepedi) understood by the interviewed farmers. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, mean, cross tabulation and percentages were used to analyse trait preferences, breeding practices, breed preference, selection criteria and traits to be improved using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 2020) version 27.0 software. The preferred traits were ranked according to their importance to the interviewed farmers (Shishay et al., 2016).

Socio-economic status
 
The results of the socio-economic status of indigenous chicken farmers in Madiga village are presented in Table 1. The socio-economic statuses of the farmers were not significantly affected (P>0.05) by gender.
 

 
Breeding practices
 
The results of the breeding practices of indigenous chicken farmers in Madiga village are presented in Table 2. The breeding practices of the farmers were not significantly affected (P>0.05) by gender.
 

 
Selection criteria
 
The results of the selection criteria of indigenous chicken farmers in Madiga village are presented in Table 3. The selection criteria of the farmers were not significantly affected (P>0.05) by the gender.
 

 
Traits preferred in breeding cocks
 
The results of the trait preferences in breeding cocks of indigenous chicken farmers in Madiga village are presented in Table 4. The body size trait was ranked as the most important trait, followed by mating ability in the second place and growth rate in the third place. Feather colour trait was ranked in fourth place and followed by the disease resistance trait.
 

 
Traits preferred in breeding hens
 
The results of the trait preferences in breeding hens of indigenous chicken farmers in Madiga village are presented in Table 5. The mothering ability trait was ranked as the most important trait, followed by hatchability in the second place and growth rate in the third place. The egg yield trait was ranked in fourth place and followed by the body size trait. Feather colour and broodiness traits were placed in the same rank in the fifth place.
 

       
The identification of breeding practices and trait preferences of livestock farmers is an essential step used for developing a successful breeding program for farmers (Tyasi et al., 2022). The objectives of the current study were to identify socio-economic status, breeding practices, production systems and trait preferences of indigenous chicken farmers at Madiga village, Limpopo province. The socio-economic characteristics of the indigenous chicken farmers were identified and the results showed that there were no significant differences between the males and females in terms of the socio-economic status, breeding practices, selection criteria and trait preferences. The results indicated that high percentage of the respondents were females, which was not in agreement with the findings of Tilahun et al., (2021) and Kassa et al., (2020) who revealed that high percentage of respondents were males. However, Bekele (2018) obtained results similar to the present research. This could be due to the different study areas used. Younger people are less interested in communal livestock farming as compared to older people since they do not see monetary returns out of it (Maswana et al., 2022). Tyasi et al., (2022) obtained results that showed that most farmers were older than 50 years and this was the same as the present study. However, Bekele (2018) and Hailu et al., (2018) showed that high proportion of farmers were under 50 years old. This can be because old people still prefer indigenous chicken meat as compared to young people who are highly exposed to processed foods made from commercial chicken breeds. In this study, it was observed that breeding practices of the farmers were not significantly affected by gender. Meat production was the main objective for the farmers to keep chickens. Similar results were obtained by Shishya et al., (2016) and Manyelo et al., (2020). However, these findings were disagreeing with a study conducted by Kassa et al., (2020) in Western Amhara, Ethiopia, who reported that egg sales and adult chicken sales were the primary reasons for farmers to keep chickens. These differences may be due to different social statuses of the study areas. Most farmers in the Madiga village owned more than 15 chickens and a study published by Bwalya and Kalinda (2014) found comparable results showing that Households in Zambia’s Lusaka and Central Provinces owned average of 29 chickens. Bekele (2018) reported that most farmers kept 4 chickens which was disagreeing with the results of this current study. These variations may be a result of limited feeds resources and breeding objectives of farmers in the areas. According to studies conducted by Shishay et al., (2016) and Hailu et al., (2014) in Ethiopia, high percentage of respondents were practicing breeding and improving their local chickens mostly through pure breeding. Similar results were obtained by the present study. Results of a study performed by Fitsum (2017) differed from the current study since they found that 60% of farmers in Central Zone of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, were improving their chickens through crossbreeding. About 50% of the respondents were using uncontrolled mating and these results were arguing with those of a study conducted by Kassa et al., (2020) who found that a larger proportion (70%) of farmers were using uncontrolled mating system. These could be a result of keeping both cocks and hens in the same area under housing or roaming freely in backyard system.  Majority of farmers who were practicing controlled mating and they were mostly culling unproductive chickens and such results were comparable with a study published by Shishay et al., (2016). However, a study conducted by Hailu et al., (2014) showed that a high percentage (41%) of farmers who practiced controlled mating were retaining best cock and hen while only 26% were culling unproductive chickens. In this study, it was shown that many farmers in Madiga village knew the inbreeding concept and these results were disagreeing the results of a similar study conducted by Hailu et al., (2014), Shishay et al., (2016) and Fitsum (2017) in Ethiopia who reported that, a high proportion of farmers had no knowledge about the inbreeding concept. A similar study by Bekele (2018) has supported the results of this study, indicating that majority of farmers had knowledge about the inbreeding concept. This high knowledge of the inbreeding concept Madiga village could be a result of previous researchers who were conducting their studies in the village. The households who practiced culling chickens from their flocks were mostly culling based on productivity. These had similarities with a study performed by Fitsum (2017) and Kassa et al., (2020). According to the results obtained by Bekele (2018), high number of farmers were culling chickens with diseases.
       
Traits are considered as criteria for selecting breeding chickens (Kassa et al., 2020). The ranking of trait preferences in cocks showed that body size, mating ability and growth rate were the highly ranked traits when selecting breeding cocks. The findings of a study presented by Fitsum et al., (2017) varied with the results of the current study since they reported that comb type, plumage colour and disease resistance were the highly ranked traits. However, another study by Tilahun et al., (2022) obtained results agreeing with to those of the current stating that body weight was highly preferred trait in cocks. In breeding hens, mothering ability, growth rate and hatchability were the most important traits. The results of other studies (Chebo and Nigussie, 2016; Kassa et al., 2020) are in line with the current study as they indicated that mothering ability and hatchability were among the highly preferred traits in breeding hens. These results showed that farmers have high preference of performance traits.

This study concludes that meat production was the major reason for village chicken production followed by egg production and religion and culture. Indigenous chicken breeds were the most common breeds in the village. However, most females in the village were keeping 5-10 chickens while males were keeping more than 15 chickens. Pure breeding, culling and both controlled and uncontrolled mating system were the most common breeding practices in Madiga village. However, the farmers had a background information about inbreeding and its complications. Body size, mating ability and growth rate in cocks and mothering ability, hatchability and growth rate were the traits preferred in hens by farmers to be improved. Growth rate was the most preferred trait in both cocks and hens among other traits such as adaptive, reproductive, behavioural and economic.

The authors are thankful to the University of Limpopo for providing necessary resources for this study. They are also sincerely grateful to the chicken farmers at Madiga Village who participated in the study.