HERITABILITY ESTIMATES OF BODY WEIGHT AND BODY DIMENSIONS IN SOME LOCAL STRAINS OF CHICKENS

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Animal production Research Institute, Agricultural Research Centre, Ministry of Agriculture, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

2 Faculty of Agriculture, Al-Azhar University, Nasr city, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Three local strains of chickens, namely, Gimmizah (G), Bandana (B) and EI-Salam (S) were used in the present study to reveal some light on the heritability estimates (h2) based on maternal half sibs (h2D) , pa‌ternal half sibs (h2S) and full sibs (h2D+S) on body weight and body di‌mensions, (shank length 'S12. keel length 'KL' and body circumference -BC"). A total of 3916 pedigreed chickens, males and females produced by 36 sires and 540 dams in two consecutive hatches were used for this study. Body weight (in g) and body dimensions (in cm) were measured at 4, 8. 12. 16 and 20 weeks of age. Estimation of average body weight and body dimensions showed that these traits increased with the advance in age. Coefficient of vari‌ation (C.V. %) for both average body weight and body dimensions tends to decrease by the advance in age in general. The heritability estimates for paternal half sibs (h2S) observed for body weight and dimensions were lower than those estimated for mater‌nal half sibs (h20) and full sibs (h2D+S). The estimates of maternal half sibs (h2D) were the highest. This held true for all parameters studied. The heritabilty estimates for Gimmizah chicks had the highest val‌ues in most studied traits and all ages for all estimates. 

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