Heritability of Albumen Height and Specific Gravity of Eggs from White Leghorns and Barred Rocks and the Correlations of These Traits with Egg Production

CONSIDERABLE attention has been focused on problems of egg quality in the past. The possibility of improving egg quality traits by breeding methods has been investigated and it has been found that the three main “components” of egg quality, namely albumen quality, shell strength, and freedom from blood and meat spots, are influenced to different degrees by heredity. The present report deals with an investigation of the first two of these traits. In this study albumen height was the criterion of albumen quality and specific gravity was used as a measure of shell strength. The effectiveness of selection in improving albumen quality has been shown by several workers, (Lorenz and Taylor, 1940; Knox and Godfrey, 1940). Taylor and Lerner (1939) demonstrated the genetic basis for shell strength by establishing two lines, differing in shell strength, from one population. McClary and Lerner (1950) reported a heritability estimate of .15 for specific …