Table ducks: Meat content and skeletal development

Synopsis In an attempt to develop a method of estimating the lean meat content of live meat‐type ducklings, measurements were made on 378 birds of the lengths of the wing‐bones and the gaps between them, using X‐ray photographs, and were correlated with measurements of the weight of the wing muscles, obtained at dissection. Associations with live and eviscerated weight were also examined. Findings are: in birds photographed at 48 d of age there were high phenotypic correlations among the skeletal measurements the skeletal measurements were correlated with breast‐muscle weight at 49 d of age; nevertheless, the correlations between skeletal and breast‐muscle measurements were not sufficiently high to form a basis for selection in breeding programmes.