Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 24 ISSUE 3
Written by Bababunmi AJAYI, Halimah AGBAJE, Kafayat AKINSOLA, Adelani ADEOYE, Great BABALOLA, Rebecca ADAGA

Repeatability is one of the genetic parameters that determines breeding values of traits. Studies on repeatability estimates of the internal and external quality traits of Nigerian Muscovy duck eggs were carried out at Poultry Unit, Teaching and Research Farm, Osun State University. Ejigbo. A total of 383 eggs collected from 50 ducks mated to 10 drakes were used for the studies. External egg quality studied includes: egg weight (EW), shell weight (SW), shell thickness (ST) egg length (EL), egg width (EWIEgg density (ED), egg shell index (ESI) and egg surface area (ESA), shell percentage (SP), shell density (SD), egg volume (EV) and shell surface area (SSA). The internal egg quality traits include: yolk colour (YC), yolk weight (YW), yolk height (YH), yolk diameter (YD), albumen height (AH), albumen diameter (AD), albumen weight (AW), yolk percentage (YP) yolk index (YI), albumen percentage (AP), and haugh unit (HU). The data collected were subjected to one way analysis of variance to determine variance components and repeatability estimates. Results showed that, repeatability estimates were ranged from low to moderately high and the repeatability values for external egg quality traits were: EW(0.44±0.02), SW(0.11±0.01), ST (-0.01±0.01), EL (0.26±0.02), EWI (0.39±0.02), ED (-0.01±0.01), ESI (-0.02±0.01), ESA (0.44±0.02), SP (0.16±0.02), SD (-0.01±0.01), EV (0.14±0.02) and SSA (0.11±0.01) while that of the internal qualities were: YC ( 0.01±0.01), YW (0.41±0.02), YH (0.10±0.01), YD (0.04±0.01), AH (-0.11±0.00), AD (0.21±0.02), AW (0.42±0.02), YP (0.37±0.02), AP (0.34±0.02), while Haugh unit is (0.34±0.02) and albumen index (0.02±0.01). It was concluded that, traits with moderately high, to high estimates could be selected in the early part of the duck’s lifetime while the low estimates of repeatability for some egg quality traits in this Muscovy duck indicates that improvement in these traits could be achieved through improvement of most of their non-genetic factors of Muscovy production.

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