Evaluation of the accuracy of sexing guinea fowl offspring by down pigmentation

The aim of the work was to study the influence of the selection of producers with contrasting pigmentation of down on the accuracy of sexing guinea fowl offspring. The research was carried out in LLC "Genofond" of the Moscow region. The basis for the creation of an autosex maternal form were cream and silver guinea fowl, carriers of the genes of silvery "S" and golden "s", which in preliminary experiments showed the possibility of sexing them according to the degree of pigmentation of the plumage. To conduct the study, two groups of guinea fowls with cream and silver plumage were completed at 20 weeks of age. There were 6 breeding nests in each group, the male was taken from a weak nest, the females with strong pigmentation of plumage. The ratio of males to females in the nest was 1:6. Experiments have shown the absence of significant differences between cream and silver guinea fowl populations in quantitative and qualitative indicators of sperm production, fertilization and egg hatchability. The selection of producers when completing a breeding herd with contrasting plumage color (males with weak, females with strong pigmentation of plumage) provided an increase in the accuracy of sexing cream guinea fowl by 5.1%, silver guinea fowl by 1.8%, while the number of nests with sexing accuracy of more than 95%, for cream guinea fowl was 50%, for silver guinea fowl 66.7% accordingly.