Abstract
This study compared the production and physiological characteristics of male and female Korean native commercial chickens. We investigated the growth performance, vitality, and stress response of 479 male and 608 female chickens from 1 d to 12 weeks of age. The body weight, feed consumption and feed conversion ratio were measured as growth performance. The survival rate, amount of telomeric DNA, DNA damage rate, heterophil-lymphocyte ratio (H/L ratio), and heat shock protein (<i>HSP</i>)-70, <i>HSP-90α</i>, and <i>HSP-90β</i> gene expression levels were analyzed as indicators of vitality and stress response. Body weight was significantly higher in male chickens than in female chickens after 2 weeks of age (<i>P</i><0.01). Feed intake was higher in male chickens than in female chickens, whereas the feed conversion ratio showed the opposite trend. The survival rate was significantly higher in female chickens than in male chickens (82.8% vs. 73.8%, <i>P</i><0.05). Stress response analysis revealed no differences between male and female chickens in terms of telomeric DNA content, DNA damage rate, H/L ratio, and <i>HSP</i> gene expression levels. Taken together, it was concluded that there was a significant difference in the growth performance and survival rate between male and female Korean native commercial chickens, whereas there was no difference in the degree of stress response between them. Therefore, in terms of the productivity of Korean native commercial chickens, it is judged that separate-sex rearing is much more advantageous than mixed rearing, regardless of the physiological characteristics of males and females.
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