Economic Breeding Objectives for Canadian Lamb

Abstract Text: New economic breeding objectives were developed for the Canadian Sheep Genetic Evaluation System based on major heavy lamb production systems. Each objective was developed from a profit function that modeled the influence of several traits on revenues and costs within a specified production system. Economic traits included live sale weight, carcass weight, carcass fat and muscle conformation, daily feed intake, number of lambs weaned, and lambing ease and interval. Standard quantitative genetics methodology was used to derive linear breeding objective equations for each system.

Keywords: sheep, selection index, profit function