Genetische Parameter für Merkmale der Eiproduktion geschätzt mit additiven und Dominanzmodellen bei Legehennen
Abstract. Title of the paper: Genetic evaluation of egg production traits based on additive and dominance models in laying hens
The study was conducted to estimate additive and dominance variances for egg production traits of two commercial purebred lines (A & D) of laying hens using an animal model analysis. Breeding values estimated from a dominance model were compared to those from an additive model.
In total, 8625 records of line A and 8968 records of line D from three generations were used in the analysis. Every record contained information on the number of eggs laid between 20 and 28 (EN1-2), 28 and 48 (EN3-7) and between 20 and 48 (EN1-7) weeks of age. Further average egg weight (EW), egg weight at 28 (EW1), 33 (EW2) and 40 (EW3) weeks of age were available. An additive animal model and one- and three-trait dominance models including the inbreeding coefficients as covariates were fitted to the data. Simultaneous estimates of the additive and dominance variance components were obtained using the REML method. The estimates of h2 from the dominance models for EN1-2, EN3-7, EN1-7 and EW were 0.40, 0.15, 0.28 and 0.62 for line A and 0.38, 0.16, 0.26 and 0.53 for line D. The ratios d2 of the dominance variance to total variance were moderate for EN (0.12–0.13) and low for EW (0.04–0.07) within line A but relatively low for EN (0.03–0.12) and high for EW (0.12–0.21) within line D. Between the breeding values of the best 100 hens of each generation estimated with the additive and the dominance models for EN1-2, EN3-7, EN1-7 and EW high rank correlations (0.946, 0.896, 0.945 and 0.991 in line A and 0.996, 0.899, 0.971 and 0.951 in line D were found
