Genetics of Keel bone selection for welfare improvement

One of the biggest welfare issues facing commercial chickens, and in particular layer chickens, is bone health and the the risk of fractures.

Given that there are more chickens than people on the planet, any benefits to welfare for these birds can help huge numbers of animals.

Housing is one of the key factors in chickens relating to keel bone damage (the biggest fracture problem facing layers), but crucially these effects can be mitigated by genetic selection for increased keel robustness.

Given how density and housing regulations are changing and are shifting towards more outdoor environments where possible, the ability to select for genes that have the greatest effect in specific environments can have the potential for greatly positively impacting bird welfare.

In collaboration with Hendrix Genetics, this proposal aims to identify genes that have specific effects in specific environments.

State of the art single cell transcriptomic and epigenomic techniques will allow the identification of the causal genes and mutations affecting fracture susceptibility and its relationship with behaviour.

Most importantly, these results will be implemented into Hendrix Genetics selection and breeding programs, allowing beneficial alleles to rapidly be selected upon and leading to real-world gains in animal welfare on a large scale.