Heritability Estimates of Adult Body Weight and Egg Production Traits in Indigenous Uttara Chickens

Data on female adult body weight and egg production measurements were analysed to obtain their heritability estimates. The me an values for body weight and egg production at various ages showed good performance of indigenous Uttara chicken. The heritability estimates observed for body weight decrease with increasing age of birds. The heritability values for various egg production traits at 40 and 58 weeks were low too high in magnitude. Changes in heritability estimates across different ages indicated expression of different genes at different ages of the Uttara fowl and the reduction of environmental effects as the floc k is maintained under quite uniform environmental conditions.