The Effect of Crossbreeding on some Economic Traits for Chicks of Lohmann Chicken

Abstract EN

The experiment has been conducted at the poultry farm of Al-Qadisyah University, College of Agriculture, Department of Animal Production, for the period 24/11/2018 till 10/4/2019 by using 80 hatching chicks which belong to 20 dams and 5 sires, each sire includes 16 chicks.

Four chickens are put with each sire, the first sire( Leghorn) crossbreeding with dams of Lohmann, the remaining sires are local cocks, with five Lohmann hens.

The chicks of each sire divided into two replicates, each replicate contains 8 chicks, the experiment continues for 42 days of age.

The experiment aims to study the effect of sire groups on growth traits (weight at hatching, weight at 42 days of age, weight gain and daily weight gain ) Also, the effect of sire on weekly consumption feed, in addition to estimate the heritability for previous traits and the genetic correlations among these traits.

The results can be summarized as follows: 1- The overall means of weight at hatching, weigh at 42 days of age, weight gain and daily weight gain are 34.572, 354.898, 320.327 and 7.627 gm respectively, the sire groups appear significantly (p0.05) effect on weight at hatching and weight at 42 days of age and weekly consumption seeds.2- Sex has significantly (p0.05) effect on weight at hatching and weight at 42 days of age.3- The conversion feed ratio is 3.462 gm consume feed/ gm of meat.4- The estimated values of heritability for weight at hatching weight at 42 days of age, weight gain and daily weight gain and daily weight gain, are 0.332, 0.55, 0.55 and 0.56 respectively.

The values of genetic correlation between weight at hatching and weight at 42 days of age and between weight at hatching and weight gain are 0.98 and 0.58 respectively.