Premium
The use of foal and studbook traits in the breeding programmes of Finnhorse and Standardbred trotters
Author(s) -
Suontama M.,
van der Werf J.H.J.,
Juga J.,
Ojala M.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of animal breeding and genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.689
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1439-0388
pISSN - 0931-2668
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0388.2010.00886.x
Subject(s) - foal , heritability , biology , horse , zoology , genetic correlation , veterinary medicine , medicine , genetics , genetic variation , paleontology , gene
Summary Genetic correlations for body measurements and subjectively scored traits between foals and studbook horses were estimated using bivariate linear mixed models. Observations for nine foal and eleven studbook traits in Finnhorses on 6529 foals and 6596 studbook horses and in Standardbred trotters on 3069 foals and 2112 studbook horses were available from the Finnish horse breeding shows. The number of sires with progeny in both foal and studbook data was 203 in Finnhorse and 145 in Standardbred trotters. Estimates of heritability for body measurements in foals and studbook horses using univariate models were high in both breeds (0.41–0.84). Heritability estimates for subjectively scored traits using univariate models were generally higher for foals (0.08–0.46) than for studbook horses (0.06–0.21) in both breeds. Genetic correlations between foals and studbook horses for body measurements were highly positive ranging from 0.74 to 0.96 in Finnhorses and from 0.79 to 0.99 in Standardbred trotters. Low to highly positive genetic correlations between foals and studbook horses for subjectively scored traits were obtained in Finnhorse trotters, whereas in Standardbred trotters genetic correlations for subjectively scored traits varied from moderately negative to highly positive. Higher estimates of heritability for foal traits and generally high genetic correlations between the foal and studbook traits indicate that an early selection for conformation traits would be efficient in the breeding programmes.