A simple caliper technique for the estimation of abdominal fat in live broilers

Abstract
1. A caliper technique for estimating the amount of abdominal fat in live broilers is described. 2. Sixty‐three male and 47 female broilers sampled at 63 d of age from an unselected control line were used to examine the accuracy of the caliper measure in predicting abdominal fat. 3. Phenotypic correlations between caliper measure and the proportion of abdominal fat were + 0.80, +0.79 and +0.81 in males, females and the heaviest 20% of males respectively. 4. The application of the technique as an indirect means of selecting for decreased abdominal fat in commercial broiler breeding programmes is discussed.