Evaluation of non-linear growth curve models in the Vietnamese indigenous Mia chicken

Understanding of animal growth is important for the improvement of management and feeding practices; however, little is known about the growth curve in Vietnamese indigenous chicken. This study was performed to determine the most appropriate models for describing the growth curve of Vietnamese Mia chicken. The study evaluated the performances of the Logistic, Gompertz, Richards, and Bridges models of body weights in 224 Mia chickens. Models were fitted using minpack.lm package in R software and Akaike's information criterion and Bayesian information criterion were used for model comparison. Based on these criteria, the Gompertz and Bridges were the best models for males and females, respectively. Estimated asymmetric weights (α) were ranged from 2,241.91 ± 14.74 (g) (Logistic) to 2,623.86 ± 30.23 (g) (Gompertz) for males and from 1,537.36 ± 10.97 (g) (Logistic) and 1,958.36 ± 72.92 (g) (Bridges) for females, respectively. The age at the inflection point was estimated from 9.32 to 10.5 weeks and from 8.51 to 9.86 weeks for males and females, respectively. In conclusion, the Gompertz model is the most suitable model for describing the growth curve of Mia chicken. The parameters obtained from growth models could help define feeding programs to meet nutritional needs from hatching to the age of maximum growth, reproduction programs, and marketing strategies.