Genetic parameters of welfare traits of quail in collective cages

1. The following research evaluated and compared estimates of genetic parameters of productive and welfare traits of quail in collective cages, testing for inclusion of indirect genetic effects (IGE).2. Data came from two trials, along two generations of pedigreed quail, housed in collective cages, with one male and three females in each cage. Each bird's body weight variation, survival time, aggressiveness, pecking wounds and any feather damage was recorded.3. Three mixed models were tested to obtain genetic parameters. The first was a classical model with no IGE, the second included IGE and the last modelling cage effect was random.4. Heritability estimates were of low magnitude ranging from 0.03 to 0.15, except for survival time, which reached 0.34. Including IGE results in variance redistribution for all traits and heritable variance increases exceeding the value of unity and IGE accounted for most of the heritable variance. Therefore, including these effects is recommended in genetic analysis under collective housing.