Divergent Selection for Twelve-Week Body Weight in the Domestic Fowl

Abstract

SOME of the most extensive selection experiments related to body size in poultry have been directed toward the selection for body weight at broiler age. Studies conducted by Waters (1931), Asmundson and Lerner (1933), Gyles et al. (1955) and Martin et al. (1953) have indicated that body size was highly influenced by selection.A review of published heritability estimates of body weight for chickens at 6 to 12 weeks of age was presented by Siegel (1962) and Amer (1965). These literature reviews seem to indicate that juvenile body weight had a moderate to high heritability in most of the populations studied.Although most of the body weight selection experiments published have been involved with increasing body weight in chickens, some reports have been published on divergent selection for body weight (Godfrey and Goodman, 1955; Schierman et al. 1959; Siegel, 1962; and Maloney et al., 1963a). The reports presented by Siegel .