Some abstracts do not have video files because ASAS was denied recording rights.
389
Estimation of genetic parameters for birth to weaning traits in meat goats
Meat goat production in American grew repeatability in the early 2000’s and has started to slow in growth over the past several years. Different reasons have been given for this decline including limited improvement in animal performance and production. There has been a limited amount of research into the genetic parameters for goat growth and repeatability of dam production. A project was conducted at Kentucky State University to evaluate heritability and genetic correlations of birth and weaning weights in meat goat kids and to evaluate the heritability and repeatability of number of kids born and weaned by meat goat does in a multi-breed herd of meat goat. Records of birth to weaning performance and dam reproduction were collected between 2005 and 2015 in the meat goat research herd at Kentucky State University. The data set included 886 kidding records. The data included birth type, number reared, birth and weaning weights and daily gain between birth and weaning. The data was analyzed using ASReml with maternal effects in an animal model. The results of this study found that direct heritability of birth weight was 0.27%±0.081 and maternal heritability of 0.14±0.035. For weaning weight heritability estimates were 0.33±0.078 and 0.25±0.042 for direct and maternal respectively. Genetic correlation between these two traits was 0.39±0.102 and the maternal correlation was 0.56±0.074. Reproduction is one of the most economically important traits in livestock production. Number of kids born and weaned is critical for success of the meat goat industry. We used a repeated measures model in ASReml on the dam performance data set that contained 886 kidding records. We found that the heritability for number of kids born was 0.07±0.068 with a repeatability of 0.14±0.044 and for number of kids weaned was 0.18±0.092 and 0.25±0.046 for heritability and repeatability respectively. Based on this research birth and weaning weights in meat goats are highly heritable and maternal effects on weaning weight are high. While heritability of number of kids born was low, the repeatability was significantly and number of kids weaned had a moderate heritability. Repeatability of both traits was lower than expected.
Keywords: Meat goat, heritability, repeatability