Estimates of the Heritability on Five Egg Productive Characters in Domestic Fowl

Abstract

The heritabilities on the five egg productive characters of domestic fowl, namely number of eggs, average egg weight, weight of the first egg, age at the first egg and body weight at laying of the first egg, were estimated in the present paper.Two breeds, White Leghorn (WL) and Barred Polymouth Roch (BPR), which were hatched and bred at four private breeding farms on the outskirts of Gifu City in Japan, were used.These estimates of heritability, h2s, were calculated by the method of analysis of variance by Lerner (1950), and the standard errors for h2s were calculated by the method of Dickerson (1960), respectively.Estimated values of heritability were as follows:1) Number of eggs: 0.232±0.068 to 0.336±0.146 in WL and 0.065±0.042 in BPR.2) Average egg weight: 0.197±0.065 to 0.665±0.168 in WL and 0.354±0.080 in BPR.3) Weight of the first egg: 0.186±0.070 to 0.508±0.099 in WL.4) Age at the first egg: 0.306±0.064 to 0.315±0.073 in WL and 0.386±0.077 in BPR.5) Body weight at laying of the first egg: 0.325±0.098 to 0.544±0.117 in WL.In general, the estimated value of heritability in BPR was smaller than the correspoding one in WL.In the phenotypic and genetic coefficients of variation, there were no clear differences among these four poultry breeding farms in each character.