The influence of selection of sires according to the degree of plumage pigmentation on the autosexness of guinea fowl

Abstract

The studies were carried out on cream and silver guinea fowl populations at Genefond LLC, Moscow region. The purpose of the work was to study the effect of selecting sires with contrasting down pigmentation on the accuracy of sexing guinea fowl offspring. The basis for the creation of an autosex maternal form was cream and silver guinea fowl, carriers of the silver “S” and golden “s” genes, which in preliminary experiments showed the possibility of sexing them according to the degree of plumage pigmentation. To conduct the study, two groups of guinea fowl with cream and silver colored plumage were recruited at 20 weeks of age. In each group there were 6 selection nests; males with weak pigmentation and females with strong plumage pigmentation were taken into the nest. The ratio of males to females in the nest was 1:6. Experiments have shown the absence of significant differences between cream and silver guinea fowl populations in quantitative and qualitative indicators of sperm production, fertilization and egg hatchability. The selection of producers when recruiting a breeding herd with a contrasting plumage color (males with weak, females with strong plumage pigmentation) ensured an increase in the accuracy of sexing cream guinea fowl by 5.1%, silver guinea fowl by 1.8%, while the number of nests with sexing accuracy was more than 95 %, for cream guinea fowl it was 50%, for silver guinea fowl 66.7%, respectively.