Table 4.

Breast and thigh pH and cooking loss of male broilers from 2 strains (CONV and SG) raised at 2 stocking densities (29 kg/m² and 37 kg/m²).

	CONV1		SG			P-value2
	29 kg/m2	37 kg/m2	29 kg/m2	37 kg/m2	SEM	S	D	S*D
Breast initial pH3	6.38	6.51	6.34	6.35	0.06	0.17	0.20	0.32
Breast 24h pH4	6.15a	6.09a	5.95b	5.99b	0.02	0.0001	0.65	0.03
Thigh initial pH	6.24	6.28	6.31	6.40	0.05	0.07	0.24	0.63
Thigh 24h pH	6.24	6.25	6.30	6.29	0.04	0.20	0.96	0.84
Breast cooking loss (%)5	8.79ab	9.85a	7.14b	8.40ab	0.52	0.01	0.04	0.85
Thigh cooking loss (%)	7.68b	7.26b	8.27b	10.11a	0.54	0.007	0.21	0.05

¹Conventional (CONV) broilers were processed on d 41 and slow-growing (SG) broilers were processed on d 62.

²S = Strain, D = Density, S*D = Strain*Density interaction.

³Initial pH was measured at slaughter, prior to chilling.

⁴24h pH was measured 24 hours after processing and after chilling overnight at 4°C.

⁵Cooking loss was calculated as the weight loss during cooking as a percentage of the weight before cooking.

^abRows not sharing the same letter are significantly different at P ≤ 0.05.