Genetic parameters for production traits in F1 reciprocal crossbred Chee Fah and Fah Luang chickens

Context Recently, Chee Fah and Fah Luang chickens have been registered as a black-bone native chicken in Thailand. Only a few studies revealed genetic information about them. No publication has reported any data related to their cross-mating, particularly, genetic parameters. Aims This study aimed to estimate genetic parameters for production traits of F1 generation of reciprocal crossbred Chee Fah and Fah Luang chickens. Methods A dataset of production traits of two crossbred groups was used in the present study. Effects of breed, month-day of incubation and sex were tested at P<0.05. Genetic parameters were estimated using the restricted maximum likelihood method with multi-trait animal model. Key results The crossbred Chee Fah×Fah Luang was significantly heavier and consumed more feed than Fah Luang×Chee Fah (P<0.05). Male chickens had significantly better 20-week-old bodyweight, feed conversion ratio and average daily gain compared with females for both crossbred groups (P<0.05). The effect of month-day of incubation had a significant influence on production traits (P<0.05), except for day-old bodyweight. Heritabilities for production traits of crossbred chickens were low to high. The highest estimate was observed for day-old bodyweight (0.97), followed by feed intake (0.40), 20-week-old bodyweight (0.06), average daily gain (0.05) and feed conversion ratio (0.03), respectively. Both positive and negative genetic correlations were found among their production traits. Favourable relationships were found between average daily gain versus bodyweight and versus feed conversion ratio (rgg=0.99 and −0.90, respectively). Similarly, production traits showed phenotypic correlations in both directions, which ranged from −0.95 to 0.99. Conclusions Heritability estimations for production traits were found in low to high magnitude. The desirable genetic relationships were found between feed conversion ratio and day-old bodyweight, 20-week-old bodyweight and average daily gain, and between 20-week-old bodyweight and average daily gain. Implications These findings could be considered as a source of genetic data for enhancing production traits of crossbred black-bone native chickens.