Evaluate the Impact of Selection for Body Weight on Growth Performance in Alexandria Local Chickens

This experiment was aimed to investigate gain of selection for body weight at 8 wks and its impact on some growth characteristics and performance in Alexandria local chickens. A total of 1041 selected and 1003 control chicks were produced in first generation from mating selected 11 sires & 110 dames and random mating 10 sires &100 dames, respectively. The results were summarized that high selection differential 78.82 g. of base generation which caused high selection gain 60.65 g. for selection criterion (BW8). Realized heritability of selected experiment was estimated 0.77 for BW8. Selection for BW8 was improved body weights with significant differences at hatch, 4 and 12 weeks of ages by 3.23, 29.06 and 145.66 g. , respectively. The same trends of significant improvement were appeared for body weight gain through the periods from hatch to 4 (0-4), 4-8, 8-12 and 0-12 wks of ages by 0.92, 1.13, 3.04 and 1.70 g/d, respectively. Besides that, Selection for BW8 was improved shank length, breast length and breast width at 8 wks of age by 1.11, 0.83 and 1.55 cm, respectively. The corresponding values at 12 wks of age were found 1.06, 1.05 and 1.68 cm, respectively. On the other hand, results were shown highly significant effect of sex on body weight at studied ages. Also, highly significant effects of sex were found on daily weight gain, shank length, breast length and width. These results were indicated that males had higher growth performances than females. Growth curves for selected and control lines were confirmed that selected line was improved in growth performance from day-old to 12 wks of age compared by control line. From these results, we can extrapolate that selection for body weight at 8 wks of age had direct and correlated improvements on growth performance of Alexandria chickens.