Effects Of Different Size Of Crest Phenotype On Production Performance In Crested White Ducks And Ducklings

The Crested White Duck (temporary name) was bred by introgressing of crest phenotype to Liancheng white ducks and then selected breeding of five generations using modern biotechnology, with high hair in the head, white hair and black mouth. With rare crest and stable heredity, Crested white duck possess certain ornamental value. But throuth the expanding group of incubation, low hatchability tend to be frequency. To better understand the how the crest phenotype inpact the production performance of Crested white duck, the histological analysis of crest, weight and body size and egg production, fertility rate, hatchability and the heathy rate was analyzed in this research, and tcreste rate and growth performance of the duckling was also involved. Preliminary behavior observation was proceeded for some ataxia was founded between the duckling. The results were summarized as follows:1. Measured results indicated that the crest and sarcoma phenotype showed certain positive correlation on common condition, while the measurement of sarcoma phenotype proved to be more accurate. The numerical result of the sarcoma phenotype measurement, which was defined as S, the product of the long and short diameter of the sarcoma, could be a standard evaluating the crest phenotype, based on which can also carry on the breeding selection of Crested white duck.. The standard in this research was:1mm2<S<300mm2:small crest,300mm2<S<500mm2: medium crest, S> 500mm2:big crest.2. Based on the value of S, the Crested white ducks were classified to 3 groups:big, medium and small crest (S:834.60 mm2,439.76 mm2 and 186.34 mm2). The measurement showed that the related degree of the crest and weight and body size proved to be low (P>0.05), which mean that the crest phenotpye did not affect the weight and body size of Crested white duck..3. The most difference between Crested white duck and nomal non-crested duck was the distinct adipose tissue aggregate behind the skull. Some skull of duck with big crest showed larger hole wheile smaller or no hole was founded in the skull of duck with small and medium crest.4. The size of the crest proved to effect the egg production, rate of fertilization and hatching. Duck with bigger crest had higher egg production (0.96 eggs everyday), while the rate of fertilization and hatching was low (28.71% and 26.24%). On the contrary, small crested duck showed higher rate of fertilization and hatching (83.11% and 62.16%). And rate of healthy duckling showed no difference (higher than 90%).5. Duckling from bigger crestd duck showed higher growth performance in the primary 6 weeks, especially in 3-4 weeks, but the differences went non-significant after the 6th week.6. Some ataxia duck was founded in the crested duckling, which significantly different from nomal duck in behavioristics, such as swunging, curve-walking, sharp-turning, sputtering and long-time falling.