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A key breed of rooster genetically modified has reduced its fertility (2014-07-11)

The world's largest chicken breeder has discovered that a key breed of rooster has a genetic issue that is reducing its fertility, adding to problems constraining U.S. poultry production and raising prices at a time when beef and pork prices are already at record highs.

Aviagen, owned privately by EW Group of Germany, provides breeding stock - hens and roosters - to Sanderson and other chicken producers, which then breed the birds and hatch their eggs to produce meat.

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"The breed, Aviagen Group's standard Ross male, is sire through its offspring to as much as 25 percent of the nation's chickens raised for slaughter, said Aviagen spokeswoman Marla Robinson.

Sanderson Farms, the third-largest U.S. poultry producer and one of Aviagen's largest customers, said it and Aviagen systematically ruled out other possible causes for a decline in fertility before determining a genetic issue was at the root of the problem.

Chicken producers have found that about 17 percent of eggs laid by Aviagen hens who mated with this kind of rooster failed to hatch—above the average failure rate of 15 percent.
Scientists investigated and came to the shocking conclusion that genetic engineering had made the roosters susceptible to overfeeding.

Sanderson gradually eliminated a number of other potential factors, including the temperature in hatcheries and the source of corn fed to the birds, Cockrell said.

Aviagen sent a team of scientists to Sanderson last autumn to study the issue and has acknowledged that an undisclosed change it made to the breed's genetics made the birds "very sensitive" to being overfed, he said.

"We fed him too much. He got fat. When he got big, he did not breed as much as he was intended to," Mike Cockrell, Sanderson's chief financial officer, said about the breed of rooster. "The fertilization went way down, and our hatch has been way down."

Aviagen regularly tweaks genetics in birds to improve them, Cockrell added.

Aviagen declined comment on changes to the rooster's genetics.

For more information
Reuters
Exclusive: Roosters' fertility problem hits U.S. chicken supply, lifts prices

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