Chicken egg incubation results and growth rate of crossbreed chickens

Abstract

Relevance. Poultry farming is one of the promising sectors of agriculture. High growth rate and good meat quality are the main factors in breeding. A convenient tool for studying the phenotypic characteristics of breeds and crosses, as well as the genetic characteristics of new breeding forms, is the creation of model animal populations.Methods. The aim in this study was to obtain first-generation crossbreeds from crossing of egg and meat-egg chicken breeds, in order to evaluate the incubation results of crossbreeds and compare them with the source breeds, as well as to study the growth and development rates in the obtained chickens’ hybrids. In the experiment, we used poultry breeds Russian white with the egg-production and Pushkin with meat and egg functions. Starting from the day the chicks were hatched with a period of once a week the measure taking of weight from the chickens were carried out. In addition, starting from the first week of life, the linear measurements, such as body length, depth, width and chest circumference, were carried out once a month. The dynamics of growth and development in crossbreeds was evaluated before the onset of maturity and oviposition in females.Results. Fertility of eggs during interbreed insemination was 81%, which differed from the indicators within the parental breeds by an average of 10%. The hatchability of eggs was less by 35.89 and 43.23% (p < 0.05) in comparison with the Russian white and Pushkin breeds. Upon reaching this period at the age of 5 months, the mass of females was 1554.8 ± 111.72, and of males — 1916.9 ± 63.88 g, and the relative increase, showing the intensity of weight gain over the entire period, was 189.6% and 191.6% respectively. Thus, the obtained individuals cannot compete with the initial breeds in their productive qualities in practical production. However, individuals of the first generation can be used to create a model population of individuals of the second generation, in which it will be possible to determine the associations of genes with economically useful traits with phenotypic diversity.