Genetic analysis of production, physiological, and egg quality traits in heat-challenged commercial white egg-laying hens using 600k SNP array data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Heat stress negatively affects the welfare and production of chickens. High ambient temperature is considered one of the most ubiquitous abiotic environmental challenges to laying hens around the world. In this study, we recorded several production traits, feed intake, body weight, digestibility, and egg quality of 400 commercial white egg-laying hens before and during a 4-week heat treatment. For the phenotypes that had estimated heritabilities (using 600k SNP chip data) higher than 0, SNP associations were tested using the same 600k genotype data.

Results

Seventeen phenotypes had heritability estimates higher than 0, including measurements at various time points for feed intake, feed efficiency, body weight, albumen weight, egg quality expressed in Haugh units,

SUBMITTER: Rowland K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6593552 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature