Inheritance of body weights in synthetic broiler chickens

Inhertiance of body weights from day old to 6 weeks of agein 498 chicks of acoloured synthetic broiler strain (PB2) was studied. Effect of sex of the chicks was significant on body weights from 1 to 6 weeks of age, while the effect of hatch was significant from day old to 6 weeks of age. The overall least square means for body weight at day old, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 weeks of age were 43.52, 102.55, 222.05, 358.59, 568.49, 847.14 and 1238.05 g, respectively. The heritability of body weights ranged from 0.12 to 0.35, based on half sib method and from 0.21 to 0.71 based on full sib (sire + dam component) method. Majority of correlations between body weights at various age were positive and significant.