Effect of strain and age on bone integrity of commercial broiler chickens

Productive performances and carcase quality of male and female Italian Padovana and Polverara slow-growing chicken breeds

“…Hormonal differences can account for the differences in the growth and bone strength between males and females (Rath et al 1999). Globally, femurs of both sexes observed in this trial were longer, thicker and heavier than those belonging to their commercial counterpart (Bruno et al 2007;Shahnazari et al 2007;Salaam et al 2016), with a superior bone strength than that of fast-growing meat-type hybrids (Rath et al 1999). A higher level of locomotory activity, which is a component of slow-growing behavioural patterns (Mench 1988), was demonstrated to strengthen bones and to reduce deformities (Reiter and Bessei 1998).…”

“…Then, mature bones can reach their optimum physical and biomechanical properties because they have the time to complete their structural development and the mineralisation processes (Rath et al 2000). The impressive growth rate and final live weight of heavy strains predispose broiler chickens to bone weakness, deformities, lameness (Julian 1998;Williams et al 2004;Salaam et al 2016) and to cortical bone fractures during catching and transportation (Rath et al 2000); these problems are scarce or absent in slower growing strains (Havenstein et al 1994). On the one hand, these skeletal abnormalities represent a welfare issue, because they are painful and reduce walking ability (Bradshaw et al 2002); as a consequence, lame broilers have more breast blisters, scratches, inflammatory processes and muscle atrophy (Julian 1998;Vaillancourt and Martinez 2002) as they spend more time lying in the litter (Oviedo-Rond on et al 2009).…”

The effect of partial replacement of milled finisher feed with wheat grains on the production efficiency and meat quality in broiler chickens

“…The highest necessary load for a femoral break was found in group W10, and in the case of the tibia bone in group W25. This may indicate better bone mineralization ( Salaam et al, 2016 ). This is important because the high bone strength helps to avoid fractures during rearing ( Grupioni et al., 2015 ), and this has an impact on the suitability for further technological processing of the carcasses.…”

Composition of Slow-Growing Male Chicken’s Meat and Bone Quality as Affected by Dietary Moringa oleifera Lam. Meal

“…Bone calcium and phosphorus were analyzed by titration [ 29 ] and colorimetric methods [ 30 ], respectively. Seedor and robusticity index, as well as bone relative density for each bone, were calculated through the following formulas: Seedor index = Weight/Length [ 31 ]; Robustness index = length/∛weight [ 32 ]; Bone relative density = bone weight/live body weight X 100 [ 4 , 33 , 34 ].…”