Meat Yield of the Strains Cobb 500, Hubbard Classic, Hubbard Flex, Hubbard 15 under Open and Close House Condition

Today Sri Lankan broiler industry has changed, selling of the whole carcass to separated carcass parts or deboned parts. In the processing industry there is a higher demand to gain the higher edible part, muscle yield and specially the breast muscle. The study was conducted to investigate the effect of strain and housing condition (open and close houses) to determine the meat yield of the broiler carcass. Hubbard Classic (HC), Hubbard Flex (HF), Hubbard 15 (H15) and Cobb 500 (C500) were the four commercial strains. At 38 days of their age, a total of 160 birds (40 birds from each strain / 80 birds from each housing condition) were randomly selected, slaughtered, eviscerated, weights were measured and dissected in to the separated parts (breast, thigh and drumstick). Weights of the body parts were recorded, deboned and the meat yield was measured. The research was designs by two factorial design. Data were statistically analyzed by using two-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVA) of SAS, 9 version. The birds that reared under the close houses showed the highest drumstick meatiness (p<0.05). The ratio of the breast muscle weight to all other muscles, the meatiness of the thigh and breast were not significant affected from the housing condition. When considering the effect of the strain the HC has gained the overall superiority except the meatiness of the breast (p > 0.05) and the thigh (p < 0.05). The HF was resulted the highest ratio for it. Other four indicators the HC resulted the higher ratio over the other three strain (p<0.05). As a conclusion, it can be recommended to the industry, rearing of HC under closed house system to gain higher meat yield.