The effects of breeder age and laying period on hatchability,fattening performance and carcass characteristics in breeder geese

This study was carried out to determine the effects of breeding age and laying period on hatchability, fattening performance, and slaughter characteristics in geese. For this purpose were examined a total of 3240 eggs from one, two, and three years old breeders were. Also, 54 geese among a total of 270 fattened were slaughtered at the age of 16 weeks to evaluate their carcass characteristics. In the first period, were 84.63%, 87.40%, and 88.33% for fertility rate, 62.40%, 68.51%, and 70.00% for hatching from set eggs, and 73.74%, 78.37%, and 79.28% for hatching from fertilized eggs were obtained in 1, 2 and 3 old breeder geese, respectively. In the second laying period, were 82.40%, 84.44%, and 85.00% for fertility; 69.63%, 67.77%, and 65.92% for hatching from set eggs and 84.62%, 80.34%, and 77.54% for hatching from fertile eggs were determined in 1, 2 and 3 old breeder geese, respectively. According to these findings, breeding age and laying period did not statistically affect incubation characteristics. The values of 81.06, 94.15, and 93.37 g for hatching weights, 5275.27, 5590.25, and 5604.90 g for live weights at the 16th week, 24.57, 25.53, and 25.75 kg for total feed consumption and 3592.00, 3814.98, and 3850.6 g for warm carcass weight were determined in the evaluation of carcass characteristics of one, two and three years old breeder geese, respectively. The results of the present study suggested that breeder age had statistically significant effects on hatching weight (P<0.001), body weight (P<0.05), total feed consumption (P<0.01), warm and cold carcass weights (P<0.01). The hatching weights of 92.81 and 86.24 g, total feed consumption values of 24.91 and 25.66 kg, feed conversion ratios of 4.57 and 4.80 were calculated in the first and second periods. The difference in the hatching period was detected to have statistically significant effects on hatching weights (P<0.001), feed consumption (P<0.05), feed conversion ratio (P<0.01), and abdominal fat weights (P<0.001). In addition, it was suggested that seasonal variations could create differences in themselves depending on the stages of the growth and development process.