Weight-Growth Curves

INTRODUCTION THE study of the changes in weight of poultry is of importance from the standpoint of the immediate economy of meat and egg production as well as from the standpoint of long-time improvement through inheritance and increase of knowledge of physiology as affected by environment and heredity. A great many papers have appeared in recent years both from the viewpoint of practical production and from the viewpoint of a mathematical representation of a, “law of growth.” The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, suggestions are made on the improvement of growth and of weight data. Second, a mathematical representation of growth is given and applied which is a generalization and unification of many of the commonly used “laws of growth.” The method of application is such that partial growth data that describe a major portion of the cycle of growth can be used to get an approximation . . .