Terry Stewart Purdue University

Publish Date: April 19, 2012

One of the most important decisions breeders make is choosing which traits to improve in their herds. Breeders must decide among numerous traits of economic importance and determine whether to improve performance a small amount in several traits or make larger amounts of improvement in fewer traits.

Publish Date: June 3, 2006

Estimating the genetic merit of all individuals in a herd is required before a comprehensive selection and genetic improvement program can be successful. Performance records need to be collected on as many animals as possible, ideally on every animal in the herd. Since animals have relatives and progeny in the herd, the records on these relatives or groups of relatives can be used to improve the estimation of the genetic merit of an individual animal. Animals are related when they receive some identical genes from a common ancestor. When they have genes in common, the performance of one individual for a given trait can be used to help estimate genetic merit for other related individuals.