Genetic relationships among calving ease, birth weight and perinatal calf survival in Charolais cattle
Journal Title: Animal Science Papers and Reports - Year 2015, Vol 33, Issue 3
Abstract
Perinatal calf mortality affects profitability of beef cattle production systems, hence, it would eventually be beneficial to include this trait in a breeding goal. The objectives of this study were to estimate the environmental effects and heritabilities of and genetic correlations among birth weight (BW), calving ease (CE) and calf survival (CS) in Charolais cattle, in the Czech Republic. The dataset contained 27,402 field records. Fixed effects in the 3-trait model were year of birth, age of dam, sex, and litter size of calf. Random effects in the model were direct and maternal genetic effects, maternal permanent environment, contemporary group (herd x year x season), and residual. Birth weight was modelled as a normally distributed trait, while for calf survival a linear logit model was applied. The CE score was either transformed to be normally distributed (T1) or treated as a binary trait (T2). For T1, heritabilities for the direct genetic effect were 0.23, 0.21 and 0.05 for BWd, CEd and CSd, respectively; while heritabilities for maternal genetic effects were 0.10, 0.02 and 0.05 for BWm, CEm, and CSm. Genetic correlations among BW, CE and CS were close to zero for both direct and maternal genetic effects with the exception of that between BWd and CEd (0.21 for T1 and 0.24 for T2). Results suggest that low additive direct and maternal genetic variances for calf survival and low to modest direct and maternal genetic correlations between BW, CE and CS would limit effectiveness of selection for calf survival in a breeding program, in spite of its economic importance in beef cattle production.
Authors and Affiliations
Luboš Vostrý, Michal Milerski, Emil Krupa, Zdeňka Veselá, Hana Vostrá-Vydrová
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP75133
- DOI -
- Views 106
- Downloads 0
Effect of DGAT1 variants on milk composition traits in Iranian Holstein cattle population
The results from a number of QTL mapping studies recently provided the evidence for quantitative trait loci affecting milk yield and milk fat content localized on bovine chromosome 14 (BTA14) close to DGAT1 gene. DGAT1 g...
cDNA cloning and expression analysis of ATGL gene in four avian species
Adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) is a new key triglyceride-specific lipase that participates in the lipolysis in adipose tissue. The full cDNA of ATGL gene in Chinese francolin, pigeon, bengalessfinch and house sparrow...
Characterization and imprinting analysis of COPG2 and MEST genes in pigs
MEST and COPG2 in human MEST imprinted cluster are two of good candidate genes responsible for primordial growth retardation including Silver–Russell syndrome. In order to increase understanding of these genes in pigs, t...
High developmental capability of porcine cloned embryos following trichostatin A-dependent epigenomic transformation during in vitro maturation of oocytes pre-exposed to R-roscovitine
The study was carried out in order to evolve, adopt and optimize the new system for preparation of nuclear recipient cells at different stages preceding the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in pigs, including in vitr...
Effect of free-range raising on performance, carcass attributes and meat quality of broiler chickens
The aim of the study was to determine the effect of free-range raising system on production results and carcass and meat quality of broiler chickens aged 42 days, using fast growing Ross 308 line. Day-old chicks were ran...