Animal Husbandry Research Division, Agricultural Research Service. 

 USDA. and a non-voting member representing the Cooperative State 

 Research Service, USDA. 



The Regional Technical Committee came together for a meeting 

 each year to discuss progress and problems and to coordinate plans for 

 future research. 



Each of the State Agricultural Experiment Stations in the North- 

 east was invited to appoint a representative on the Technical Committee. 

 Each representative doing research on the Regional project prepared 

 a contributing project outline covering his contribution to the Regional 

 effort. As progress was made and objectives changed, many of the con- 

 tributing projects were revised to recognize the new direction of the 

 research. A list of the individual contributing projects is provided on 

 pages 4 and 5. 



Results 



A. BREEDING METHODS 



Poultry breeders are constantly on the alert for new methods which 

 will permit more rapid progress in breeding for increased egg and meat 

 production. The first objective of NE-6 was to develop and evaluate 

 method? for breeding improvement of poultry, especially in egg produc- 

 tion, egg quality, meat production, viability and other economically im- 

 portant factors. 



However, in order to evaluate adequately different breeding meth- 

 ods, control populations were considered necessary. The Technical Com- 

 mittee decided to develop randombred populations of chickens for use 

 as controls. 



Randombred Populations 



Poultry geneticists have long felt a need of a system whereby gen- 

 etic progress could be measured from one year to another. Environ- 

 mental fluctuations often made it impossible to determine if changes 

 which occurred from year to year had a real genetic basis. To solve 

 this problem, two randombred control populations of chickens with 

 broad genetic origins were originated to assist in fulfilling the objectives 

 of NE-6 (3, 26). In addition to the function of providing genetically 

 stable flocks, the randombred populations served as useful bases for the 

 initiation of selection experiments. 



Maintenance procedures were designed to minimize those factors 

 which change gene frequency. Each population was maintained with no 

 less than 50 male and 250 female breeding birds and no full or half 

 sibs were permitted to mate. Also, each sire was permitted only one son 

 and each dam only one daughter as breeders in the next generation. 



The heavy breed Connecticut randombred population was formed 

 by a double cross of four strains of Columbian-patterned birds (2). It 

 was designed to contain a sampling of genes from both egg and meat 

 strains. Numerous traits, such as rate of feathering, feather color, 

 feather pattern, stubs, side sprigs, and ear lobe color, were recorded in 

 each generation so that genetic stability could be estimated. 



