Predicting bone quality in laying hens

This study is part of a project to reduce the problem of keel bone fractures using genetics and genetic derived solutions. We are developing a method to quantify keel bone quality in living hens and to increase the amount of information from an already developed method to measure tibial density on live hens as well as work towards genomic selection using new and traditional bone traits. The intention is to apply this to pedigree hens as a predictive tool for bone quality. Bone quality is one of the biggest welfare problems facing laying hens. Current methods of measurement require killing the bird and are not suitable for practical selection to improve bone quality and reduce fractures. 

The objective of this specific project is twofold. 1) To test the hypothesis that genomic predictions for bone quality will result in populations with differences in bone quality and 2) to provide more training data for subsequent genomic predictions.