Ilias Kyriazakis

Introduction:A humpy-backed syndrome of pigs has persisted in the British pork industry and causes of the deformity have been difficult to identify (Penny RHC, 1986). The disease presents challenges in regards to handling the carcass (Holl et al , 2008) and is suspected to slow down growth rate (Straw, Bates, & May, 2009). There is no clear evidence of the biological mechanisms by which kyphos ...

1. IntroductionGenetic selection for production traits, to meet increased requirements for chicken meat, has been applied to broiler chickens at an unprecedented rate (Siegel, 2014; Tixier-Boichard et al., 2012; Zuidhof et al., 2014). Such an emphasis on productive traits may have compromised the ability of modern broilers to cope with metabolic and skeletal disorders (Dawkins and Layton, 2012; Ju ...