Incubation and Early Growth Performances of Local Guinea Fowl (Numida meleagris) Fed on a Diet Supplemented with Moringa oleifera Leaf Meal in the Sudano-Guinean Zone of Cameroon

Background: Guinea fowl breeding is gaining more interest as a promising alternative in poultry production due to their high-quality meat and eggs for vulnerable community in Africa. However, guinea fowls are more often raised under a scavenging system with minimal housing and health monitoring, which may negatively hamper their productivity in term of reproduction and growth performance. Aims: This study aims to characterize and evaluate the hatching performances of guinea fowl eggs, and then, the early growth performances of keets post-hatch fed on experimental diet containing Moringa oleifera leaf powder in the Sudano-Guinean zone of Cameroon. Materiel and methods: A total of 510 eggs were collected from farm along three localities (Biou, Figuil and Batao) characterized, weighed and measured. They were then grouped into five egg weigh categories: [25 - 30[, [30 - 35[, [35 - 40[, [40 - 45[ and [45 - 50[ and incubated for 30 days. At the end of the incubation, unhatched eggs were candled to count unfertile eggs, and unhatched fertile eggs were separated through candling and breaking of unhatched eggs to count dead in shell embryos classified into 4 stages (very early, early, late and very late). Keets were collected at hatch as from 30 days of incubation from each group and weighed to determine their baseline weight post-hatch. Guinea fowl were weighed and monitored for 12 weeks to assess the effect of Moringa oleifera leaf meal feed (MOLM) supplementation on growth traits performances. On a feed containing 3005.28 Kcal of metabolizable energy and 19% crude protein, the guinea fowl were fed ad libitum with four experimental diets: T0 (only basal diet), T1 (basal + 1% MOLM), T2 (basal + 2% MOLM) and T3 (basal + 3% MOLM). They were randomly assigned to keets group. Data collected included: egg characteristics (weight, height, large diameter and shape index), incubation performance (fertility rate, apparent and actual hatching rates, embryonic mortality rate, average hatching weight and percentage of viable guinea fowl). Feed intake, body weight, average weight gain and feed conversion ratio were recorded for growth performance. Results: Our results showed that, irrespective of location, egg weights ranged from 27.71 to 45.56 g, with an average of 37.81 ± 3.54 g. Eggs weighing between 35 and 45 g accounted for 77.25% of eggs collected overall. The effective hatching rate was 35.55%. The highest value was recorded at Figuil (41.61%) and the lowest (13.33%) at Batao. Candling gave fertility