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Relationships between egg size, body weight and pelvic dimensions in turkeys

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2010

P. M. Hocking
P. M. Hocking
Affiliation:
AFRC Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research, Edinburgh Research Station, Roslin, Midlothian EH25 9PS
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Abstract

Females of four strains of commercial turkeys, including one large strain with a characteristically high rate of oviducal prolapse, were given food either ad libitum or controlled to reach proportionately 0·8 or 0·6 of the body weight of birds fed ad libitum at 24 weeks of age. Two pens of five turkeys from each treatment were photostimulated at 24 and 30 weeks of age. Each turkey was autopsied after it had laid its first egg. The relationships between egg weight and body weight, and between the weight of abdominal fat, diameter of the vent and distance between the pubic bones and egg weight were studied by regression analysis. Egg weight was a function of body weight raised to the power 0·29 which was significantly different from the allometric relationship for Galliform species of 0·64. There was no evidence that differences existed in the quantity of abdominal fat which could impede oviposition and contribute to oviducal prolapse. There were strain differences in the diameter of the vent and distance between the pubic bones in relation to egg weight but the smallest and largest strains were similar. It was concluded that artificial selection had changed the species relationship between egg weight and body mass and that the susceptibility to oviducal prolapse in sire line turkeys was probably physiological in origin.

Keywords

allometrybody weightegg massprolapseturkeys
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Production , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 145 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © British Society of Animal Science 1993

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