Sj. Vanschalkwyk et al., REPEATABILITY AND PHENOTYPIC CORRELATIONS FOR BODY-WEIGHT AND REPRODUCTION IN COMMERCIAL OSTRICH BREEDING PAIRS, British Poultry Science, 37(5), 1996, pp. 953-962
1. Reproduction is an important aspect of ostrich farming, where incom
e is mainly derived from hides and meat. No estimates of repeatability
or phenotypic correlations for reproduction and body weight are curre
ntly available for commercial ostriches. 2. Means, standard deviations
, repeatability coefficients and phenotypic correlations for and among
reproductive traits and body weight were computed for the average yea
rly production of 42 to 67 mixed age ostrich breeding pairs maintained
on the Klein Karoo Agricultural Development Centre from 1990 to 1994.
The among-breeding-pair variance component was used in the repeatabil
ity estimations, as the pairing off of the same male:female combinatio
ns repeatedly resulted in the confounding of these effects. 3. Phenoty
pic correlations of male body weight with egg production performance (
-0.20) and female body weight with hatchability percentage (-0.16) wer
e negative. Correlations of egg production performance with infertilit
y (-0.20) and hatchability (0.23) percentages were favourable. 4. The
repeatability of annual adult body weight was 0.68 +/- 0.05 in male os
triches and 0.61 +/- 0.05 in females. 5. Ostrich reproduction traits w
ere extremely variable. An appreciable portion of this variation could
be attributed to the repeatable nature of breeding pair performance f
rom year to year. All the reproduction traits analysed were moderately
repeatable, ranging from 0.38 + 0.07 (hatchability percentage) to 0.5
1 +/- 0.06 (percentage of embryonic deaths). Egg production performanc
e during the first breeding season of 17 breeding pairs for which data
were available predicted subsequent performance satisfactorily, sugge
sting that selection decisions can be made at quite an early age.