Estimation of heritability for the early body weight of new Yangzhou chickens

Abstrcat 2 batches (209 individuals) of new Yangzhou chickens were randomly selected according to family from (2 different) randomly mated populations which were reared in different years. The REML method was used to estimate the variance components. The statistical analysis results showed that the heritability of early body weight of new Yangzhou chicken at 5 different stages was medium, range from 0.309()6 to 0.568()4, reached or nearly reached the significance ((P0.05),) the heritability of 0 week body weight was the highest and nearly reached 0.6, the others of 2, 4, 6, 8 weeks body weight were range from 0.30 to 0.44.