Livestock Studies 2007, Vol 47, Num, 1     (Pages: 021-028)

Egg weight and egg weight repeatability of Denizli and Gerze local hen breeds

Neval ÖZDOĞAN 1 ,İ. Safa GÜRCAN 2 ,Ali BİLGEN 1

1 Lalahan Hayvancılık Merkez Araştırma Enstitüsü-ANKARA
2 Ankara Üniversitesi Veteriner Fakültesi Biyoistatistik Anabilim Dalı-ANKARA
- Egg weight , egg weight repeatability and phenotypic correlation between body weight and average egg weight in Denizli and Gerze of Turkish local hen breeds were investigated in this study.The hen including 235 Denizli and 59 Gerze were randomly chosen in two local hen breeds under conservation in Lalahan Animal Research Institue. There are three hatched groups (1, 2, 3) for each breed with one week interval in the research. At the beginning of the research average egg weights of Denizli and Gerze in groups 1, 2, 3 were found to be 41.97 ± 0.68 and 34.34 ± 0.36 g; 39.38 ± 1.06 and 37.21± 1.56 g; 38.83 ± 2.33 and 33.88 g, respectively. At the end of the research average egg weights of Denizli and Gerze in groups 1, 2, 3 were found to be 58.32 ± 0.68 and 54.46 ± 1.43 g; 57.37 ± 0.49 and 53.51 ± 0.97 g; 56.78 ± 0.42 and 52.41 ± 0.64 g, respectively. The increasing of egg weight with age were curvilinear in each group for both breeds. Differences between breeds in average egg weights were significant statistically in each group. Phenotypic correlation coefficients between body weight and average egg weight in Denizli and Gerze were 0.29 and 0.46, respectively. The repeatability of egg weight for two breeds were found to be 0.46 ± 0.01 and 0.35 ± 0.03, respectively. Keywords : Hen, Denizli, Gerze, egg weight, repeatability, correlation coefficient