Customised selection indices for New Zealand's beef cattle industry

Author
P.L. Charteris, D.J. Garrick, S. Newman
Institute of Veterinary, Animal & Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
1CSIRO Tropical Agriculture, North Rockhampton, QLD, Australia

Summary

Breeding objectives were developed for a range of New Zealand beef cattle breeding, production and marketing circumstances. Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) were weighted by their effect on farm profit to derive an index value for each bull. A sire selector on the World Wide Web (WWW) was developed which ranks sires on economically-based selection indices. Such a tool assists bull-breeders and bull-buyers to identify sires which meet their breeding objectives and enhances the value of existing EBVs by relating their interpretation to farm profit.

Keywords:

Breeding objectives, selection indices, sire selector, World Wide Web.

Published in the Proceedings of The 6th World Congress Genetics Applied to Livestock Production