Studies on Hereditary Nervous Disorder in the Gifu Native Fowl

Abstract

Nervous disorder chicks appeared in the Gifu Native Fowl and they frequently trembled and shaked shier heads horizontally since hatched. Most of these chicks showed extreme difficulty in food and water intake, and subsequently died within a week. These nervous disorder chicks were obtained from only mating between males and females previously produced nervous disorder chicks. From this mating it was resulted in producing 44 normal and 14 nervous disorder chicks, closely fitting to 3:1 ratio. It is suggested that these males and females may be heterozygous for the nervous disorder and that the gene leading to the nervous disorder may be autosomal recessive. These results indicate that such hereditary disease found in the Gifu Native Fowl is simillar to the congenital tremor in chicks reported by HUTT and CHILD (1934).