Abstract
An experiment was carried out with male and females broilers of two different commercial breeds to evaluate bone mineral density of the right femur head. A number of 600 one-day-old broilers were raised in an experimental poultry house up to 42 days of age at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of UNESP, Botucatu, Brazil. After slaughter, three males and three females in each breed in each of the established gross scores were selected. Their femora heads were submitted to gross examination, and subsequently the thighs were submitted to the Veterinary Hospital for radiographic analysis. Femora were also submitted to bone resistance, Seedor index, and dry matter content analyses. All these bone quality characteristics were different between males and females, independent of breed. Breeds presented similar behavior. It was possible to establish correlations between bone quality parameters, and confidence intervals for bone mineral density values, correlating them to femoral degeneration score, which allows characterizing femoral head lesions by radiographic optical densitometry.
Highlights
The impressive growth of the domestic poultry industry places Brazil in an outstanding position in the world market, resulting in significant profit, and in some problems for poultry producers
There was no interaction between breed and sex (p>0.05) for any of the evaluated parameters
Average body weight and weight gain was higher in males, independent of breed, which has been already described in literature (Mendes et al, 1993; Cotta, 1994; Moreira et al, 2003; Moreira et al, 2004)
Summary
The impressive growth of the domestic poultry industry places Brazil in an outstanding position in the world market, resulting in significant profit, and in some problems for poultry producers. The increasing genetic selection pressure, proper management, and high-density diets have promoted excellent performance results. Some metabolic disorders currently observed derive from these improvements in genetics and in management. Problems like femoral head necrosis in broilers cause significant losses for producers. According to Cook (2000), it is estimated that about 3.2% of broiler production is lost due to skeletal malformations in the US. The lack of a standardized terminology to properly describe the different locomotory anomalies negatively contributes the correct estimation of losses, in addition to the fact that many symptoms caused by these conditions are not clinically visible (Tardin, 1995)
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