Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

A survey was conducted to “Morphological characterization indigenous chicken in Thane district of Maharashtra.” The main object of study was to identify different morphological characters of indigenous chicken. Three stage stratified random sampling was followed for collection of data. At first stage from proposed district under study i.e., Thane five tehsils were selected having maximum indigenous poultry population and from each tehsil four villages were selected randomly in second stage. In third stage four farmers having five birds were selected randomly. Thus, total sample size 80 poultry owners and 400 birds were selected.

The production performance studied indicated that the female chicken was laying 70 to 85 eggs with good fertility of 78.52 per cent and hatchability of 74.99 percent. Chickens were average egg producer with (13.44±0.29) egg per clutch and (4.51±0.19) clutches per year respectively. The eggs were small in size. Although indigenous birds generally lay few eggs and grow very slowly. They have ability to increase their productivity.