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Aim The experiment was carried out to evaluate different external and internal egg quality traits and to figure out their mode of inheritance from a set of hierarchically classified data. Materials and methods The data collected from 548 progenies (1 egg from each progeny) of 282 dams mated to 47 sires (1 sire mated to 6 dams) of a White Leghorn flock were used in the present study. Phenotypic means and their standard errors were calculated for all the quality traits. Heritabilities were estimated for these traits separately from "sire," "dam" and "sire+dam" (full-sib) components of variance using Statistical Package for Social Sciences-17 program. Results External quality traits such as; egg weight, length, width, shape index, surface area, shell weight, shell thickness, shell ratio, and internal quality traits such as; length, width, height, and weight of albumen and yolk, albumen index, albumen ratio, Haugh unit (H.U.), yolk diameter, yolk index, yolk ratio, and yolk albumen ratio were measured in 548 eggs of the experimental White Leghorn flock. The eggs were found to have optimum weight (57.78±0.20 g), shape index (73.53±0.18) and shell characteristics (6 g, 0.32 mm) as per its genetic potential. Higher values for albumen height (8.41±0.04) mm and H.U. (92.00±0.19) are attributable to the freshness of eggs and proper age of hens. Heritability estimates from "sire" component of variance were higher than "dam" and "sire+dam" components for the traits like egg weight, length, width, shape index, surface area, albumen width, albumen index, H.U., yolk width, yolk height, yolk weight, and yolk index whereas for rest of the traits the values estimated from "dam" component were higher. Estimates from "sire+dam" component were intermediate to the estimates derived from "sire" and "dam" components. Conclusion The heritability estimates from different egg quality traits were moderate to high. Since most of the traits have high heritability values, these traits can be improved by mass selection.

Aim: The present study was conducted to investigate the important climatic variables affecting production and reproduction in a broiler breeder flock. Materials and Methods: The experiment was conducted for a period of 1 year on colored synthetic female line male and female poultry birds. 630 female progeny and 194 male progenies from 69 sires and 552 dams produced in four consecutive hatches at an interval of 10 days were used for the present study. Each of the seven, body weight and reproduction traits were regressed with nine environmental variables. Initially, the data were subjected to hatch effect and sire effect corrections through best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE) method and, then, multiple linear regressions of environmental variables on each trait were applied. Result: The overall regression was significant (p

The present study evaluated the effects of protein intake on growth, nutrient utilization efficiency and body conformation traits in broilers. Three-hundred sixty (360) day-old chicks were distributed into 3 groups and offered starter diets containing 18, 19 or 20% protein up to 5th week. From each group, 96 pullets with higher body weight (BW) were selected and divided into high body weight (HB) and low body weight (LB) groups. The pullets of each BW group were distributed in 6 replicates. Three of the replicates were allotted to grower diets with 10 or 14% CP from 6-20 weeks. Pre-breeder and breeder diets were offered during 21-23 weeks and 24-50 weeks, respectively. For all groups, target 20th week BW was 2200g. Feed intake, BW and feed conversion efficiency were recorded. Body conformation traits were measured at 5th and 20th weeks. In conclusion, birds fed starter diet with 19% CP and grower diet with 14% CP had better body conformation, growth and feed efficiency.