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Abstract
Rapid growth resulted in heavy turkey birds at a young age. The extreme imbalance between skeleton development and body weigh has led to several fitness and animal wellbeing anomalies. Of particular interest is the decay in leg soundness and the bird walking abilities. In the current study, different statistical models and traits were used to investigate the genetic relationships between growth and walking ability in a commercial turkey population. Estimates of the heritability of growth traits were moderate and ranged between 0.44 and 0.51. The heritability of walking ability was 0.25 using a linear-threshold model. The genetic correlations between walking ability and growth traits ranged between -0.45 to -0.35 depending on the statistical model used. Genetic correlations between walking ability across different growth rate classes seem to indicate a non-linear relationship between growth and leg problems. These results indicate that walking ability should be included in the selection index.