Long description:

Improved varieties of chicken and their crosses need to be introduced and propagated in the rural India to improve the national production. The increased production is needed to be supplemented with evaluation of the fertility and hatchability traits of the improved breeds suitable for backyard farming. Black Rock, Gramapriya and Vanaraja breeds of chicken are newly introduced breeds and performance of these breeds is very little known. In practice, fertility and hatchability are two very important traits and these traits are determined by many factors such as breed, age, egg qualities, storage time and environmental conditions. In most cases, they are related to inadequate incubation technologies rather than to poor egg quality. However, in order to increase overall incubation results, an improvement in incubation technologies must be accompanied by an improvement in the quality of hatching eggs. Aim of this study was to observe the breed effect on the fertility and hatchability in Black Rock, Gramapriya and Vanaraja breeds of chicken.