Effectiveness of indirect selection for egg characteristics using certain plasma constituents in three local breeds of chickens

Abstract EN

This work aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the indirect selection by using certain plasma constituents at 8 and 12 weeks of age to achieve an advantageous change of the target productive traits in three local breeds of chickens: Dandarawi (Dand), Fayoumi (Fay) and Golden Montazah (GM).

Breed significantly (P? 0.01) affected plasma constituents regardless of age of measurements.

Fay had significantly higher PG and PTC than other breeds (200.65 and 108.20 mg/100ml) whereas GM had the lowest PTC of 88.91mg/100ml.

Dand had the highest PTP being 6.38mg/100ml.

Age of measurements significantly affected either PTP or PTC while, its effect on PG was insignificant.

Higher PTP at 12 than 8 weeks of age was shown whereas the PTC was significantly higher at 8 weeks of age than 12 weeks of age (6.46 vs 5.69 and 109.79 vs 96.94 mg/100ml, Table 1).

Significant breed by age of measurement interaction (P? 0.01) effects on PG, PTP and PTC were found.

There were inconsistent breed differences either in magnitude or direction in the expected correlated responses in egg production-related traits and each of clutch size and pause traits to future selection.

Therefore, plasma constituents at 8 and 12 weeks in Dand, GM and Fay can be used as selection criteria to improve their productive performance.

So, the more than unity efficiencies indicated indirect selection for target productive traits through selection for plasma constituents at certain studied ages which was more efficient than the direct selection for improving these traits.

However, direct selection for productive traits will be the most efficient method for improving these traits if their efficiencies were lower than unity.