Abstract
Survival in purebred laying hens is known to be influenced by social interactions (Craig and
Muir, 1996). A bird’s chance to survive is highly influenced by the cannibalistic behaviour
of its cage members. As these negative social interactions are undesirable from both welfare
and economic perspectives (Albentosa et al., 2003), measures, such as beak-trimming, are
taken to minimize mortality due to cannibalism. In order to put a ban on beak-trimming in a
sensible sound way, breeding programs are now aiming for the genetic improvement of
laying hens so that they become more sociable. When improving traits affected by social
interactions, one should add an associative component to the traditional model. The
associative effect represents the heritable effect an individual has on the phenotype of
another individual. When accounting for this effect, an individual’s chance to survive is not
only considered to be affected by the direct effect of the individual, but also by the
associative effects of its cage members. When neglecting the associative effects, response to
selection could move in the opposite direction (Griffing, 1967; Wade, 1976).
So far, genetic parameters for direct and associative effects have been estimated in purebred
layer lines only (Ellen et al., 2008). These parameters give insight in the magnitude of the
associative effects. Genetic parameters estimated in purebreds, however, can not simply be
extrapolated to crossbreds. Moreover, since improvement of crossbred performance is the
ultimate breeding goal, the evaluation of purebred lines based on the performance of their
crossbred offspring is of most interest. Therefore, we estimated the genetic parameters for
direct and associative effects on survival in the reciprocal crosses of two purebred layer lines.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production |
Pages | 575-575 |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |
Event | 9th WCGALP, Leipzig, Germany - Duration: 1 Aug 2010 → 6 Aug 2010 |
Conference/symposium
Conference/symposium | 9th WCGALP, Leipzig, Germany |
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Period | 1/08/10 → 6/08/10 |