**5. Comparison of Nigerian institutions and world breeding companies on adopted strategies for genetic improvement of chickens**

Given the numeric strength of the ongoing researches in the Nigerian Universities, there is no gainsaying that they have been actively involved in genetic research of their chickens. However, chicken breeding research in Nigerian Universities and institute has maintained basic genetic principles aspect in scope and operation of the breeding companies, although it has evaluated genetic merit of our present animals through artificial selection.

The result of this study showed that researchers at the Universities used adequate sample size, since breeding companies at the beginning used few animals of different breeds.

The findings of this study further showed close to zero funding of chicken breeding research; thus, personal funding is the available option for the majority. Consequently, few passionate breeders have remained attracted. Those who are passionate devise the approach of early breeders. They raise 20 to 50 chicks per generation. They often suffer great mortality, poor growth and delayed egg production emanating from shortage of feed, scarcity of drugs, and other environmental factors. They struggle to keep this small population, which were affordable and capable of creating generation of inbred lines, while eggs and chicks reared each generation would offset most cost of production. This approach, though may be efficient, slows down genetic progress.

No existing policy on funding was recorded in any of the chicken breeding researches in Nigeria, an aberration to breeding operation, which are known to be expensive.

Nigerian researchers use majorly SAS, SPSS statistical procedure, while breeding companies use complex animal models for analysis and bioinformatics for genetic improvement studies.

The result revealed the profit-driven goals upheld by breeding company in effort to sustain production. There seems to be no profit-based genetic researches at the universities.

Researcher at Nigerian universities and Institution has embraced genomic selection and conventional improvement strategies; however, it is far less comprehensive than the breeding companies.

Only a few performance traits are measured in Nigerian chicken breeding programs, while breeding companies measure up to 40 performance traits [63].

This study showed that very little attention to inbreeding and development of highly inbred lines by Nigerian universities and institute, although it is the basic element for breeders.

The study revealed that no research was reported on market testing of sibs in any of the universities, although it is a prerequisite before a breed enters a market.

Furthermore, this study showed that all breeding companies as a necessity bred many strains simultaneously [67]. However, no such attempt was found in Nigerian universities.

A comparative study of the method of chicken improvement at the Nigerian universities studied and the breeding companies showed that AI and Embryo transfer, which is the backbone of multiplication of foundation stocks in breeding companies [63] was not done at any of the Animal science department of the universities (UNN, FUNAAB and Shika Zaria).

The result of this study showed that ownership of breeding companies is passed from generation to generation, [63]. This is not common in the Nigeria institutions.

## **6. Summary and conclusion**

There is no gainsaying that the bottleneck of creating layer breed of chicken in Nigeria has been exhaustively evaluated in this study. The challenges comprises technical, financial, leadership, policy, and pathological problems.

The inertia and ineptitude of leadership elicits poor funding cum environment lacking the resilient approach that characterizes breeding companies.

Finally poor technical know-how consisting of inappropriate models, inadequate number of performance traits, economically inefficient selection goals, wrong use of hybrid vigor, multiplication of foundation stock, absence of many strains, and poor AI facilities are the major factors responsible for the belated creation of layer breed in the Animal Science Department of the Nigerian universities.

### **6.1 Recommendations**

We recommend further study on the scope of very recent chicken breeding researches in Nigerian universities and institution, a vibrant breeding policy and adequate international funding for proper orientation and alignment with the of world chicken breeding strategies to help position Africa and Nigerian poultry industry to deliver its SDGs predicted goal of providing food security and animal protein for the global populace by 2050.

*Bottleneck in Creating Layer Breeds of Chickens in Nigeria DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109090*
