Crossbred fowls are more profitable: Part 2

Hybrids of the North Holland Blue and New Hampshire breeds. FW ARCHIVE

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Herewith, the second instalment in a two-part series which looks at an article that covered an investigation into the effects of the crossbreeding of poultry breeds on various factors. We continue with the breeding procedure.

Four cockerels, one from each source were selected at random for each breeding pen. A fifth was randomly selected from one of the sources for each breeding.

A record was kept of the individual egg production of the hens, and three consecutive settings of eggs were collected and incubated in a forced-draught incubator. The chickens were reared under identical conditions.

At the age of 16 weeks, the pullets were transferred to a laying house. From the first two batches, 50 pullets each were randomly selected and allocated to the different divisions of the laying house. They were trap-nested and a record kept of egg production, feed consumption, egg size, and mortality up to 500 days old.

The third group of pullets was used as replacement material in the event of deaths. The experiment was terminated when the hens reached the age of 500 days.

SEXUAL MATURITY

The Black Australorp male x White Leghorn female hybrid showed the earliest sexual maturity (average of 171,4 days).