REPEATABILITY ESTIMATES OF FEEDING BEHAVIOURS IN ARBOR ACRES CHICKEN

Abstract

This study aimed at estimating repeatability of feeding behaviours in Arbor Acres chicken. A total of 72 birds reared for day-old were used in the experiment. The birds were assigned into four groups in a completely randomized design with three replicates per group. Each replicate comprised six (birds) of equal sexes. The birds were housed on deep litter system while commercial feeds and water were given ad libitum. From the 4th to the 8th week of the experiment, two feeding behaviours of individual birds were monitored using a digital camera installed in individual pens. The feeding behaviours included the hourly number of feeder visits (HNFV) and the hourly time spent at feeder (HTSF) (8-9 am in the morning and 3-4 pm in the afternoon). The components of variance were estimated using the PROC VARCOMP option of restricted maximum likelihood (REML) method of the General Linear Model (GLM) of IBM-SPSS procedure to generate repeatability coefficients. The results obtained indicated that repeatability estimates were low in both HNFV (R =0.05) and HTSF (R = 0.07). The present information provides a guide to future studies on genetic analysis of feeding behaviours using large sample size.