AgVic's genetic hens join the elites

Agriculture Victoria's 40-year bantamised hen project has entered the commercialisation phase, beginning a joint research deal with an elite international breeder.

The project, initiated in 1963 by Bill Stanhope, is intended to produce smaller hens that are able to lay the same number of and similar sized eggs as their larger counterparts.

Senior industry officer (poultry) Dr Greg Parkinson said the benefit of the work, undertaken within the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, would be a reduction in feeding costs of between 5 and 15 per cent.

"We have achieved a certain amount in Australia by breeding bantam lines to good commercial stocks but we have always been a bit behind world's best practice," Parkinson said.

"Now we are doing it in elite breeding stocks."

He said the commercial partner, who he would not name, had provided the Victorian group with 140 elite breeding hens and 40 roosters to add to its existing stock of 100 bantam hens and 30 roosters.

The researchers were currently examining such hybrid qualities as body weight, egg weight, shell quality, liveability and egg size among their stock of bantamised white leghorns and Rhode Island reds.

Parkinson said that while a 1.8kg commercial white leghorn produced an average egg size of 63g, the group's bantamised version laid eggs weighing about 60g.

"We are still a little bit behind in egg weight, which is the main driver of return per unit production, but we're actually reducing feed intake so much it might be a new economic threshold that would balance against a slightly lower egg weight,' he said.

"We're not too far behind though. It's nothing that can't be solved with some cross breeding and judicious selection."

The group's breeding process, honed over 16 generations of fowl, was done through traditional quantitative genetics rather than the more controversial genomic manipulation, making it an easier sell to consumers.

Bantam fowls, usually seen at agricultural shows, are the perfect miniature of a normal pedigree bird.

Parkinson said his former boss came up with the idea of bantams as commercial egg producers in 1963 after considering the natural difference in egg weight as a proportion of a bird's body.

While a large hen produced eggs that were 3 to 3.5 per cent of its body weight, the ratio for a bantam was 4 to 4.5 per cent.

"He started with the concept that we could move smaller metabolic body size genes into hens and maintain egg production," Parkinson said.

"Now we have now worked it up to the point where we have a commercial partner with whom we are undertaking joint venture research."

He said that while having more of the smaller birds producing the same number of eggs could make small production gains, it was not the group's aim.

"The main gain will be strictly in lower maintenance required and reduced food intake and the saving gained from that," he said.

"We think a 5 per cent reduction in food intake for a specific egg mass output is a given, but we are working towards 15 per cent and beyond."

The team is anticipating another four years of genetic work, followed by a commercial product in six years with a strong royalty stream.

"The strategy in any breeding company has always been to reduce the metabolic body size of the fowls and our work allows them to accelerate that process," Parkinson said.