Genetics

Genetics Improvement

When we consider the various factors that contribute to the lucrativeness or profit-making rate of a farm, then animal genotype is one major factor. It helps to improve the smooth transition of pasture into the product. In the long run, the improvement of genetics in livestock, especially the sheep industry, has been of utmost focus to us at the MacKinnon Group. Since 1983, our consultants and key operators have had vested interests in genetic improvement and sheep breeding.

The founder of the MacKinnon project, Dr Fred Morley, received intensive training from an expert in quantitative genetics, Dr Jay Lush. He was trained at the University of Iowa around the 1950s. These training sessions then formed the foundation of Dr Fred’s work. In turn, his work, which gained lots of recognition, have highlighted the advantage of sheep measurement to achieve genetic benefits.

Furthermore, the MacKinnon project has helped decide the effects of using unbiased measurements in the production systems of sheep.

A lot of equally important issues have been mentioned in journals, reports, articles, etc.

Merino Breeding

I am certain you must have realised that the kind of Merino that you undertake has some effects on your profit-making on a long-term basis. Noteworthy, in the process of managing the merinos from different flocks of sheep together as a single flock, you get to notice the distinction in their processes. In turn, because these sheep have been catered for together right from birth; you can logically infer that most of the differences are largely due to differences in genetics.

Ensuring Your Flock Genetics Are in the Top 10% Available. 

The top sheep means that you have a breeding goal for your flock’s future for the long term. As such, the top sheep will be the flock that meets its goal the most.

In determining this, certain questions have to be answered. These questions are.

  • What are the advantages of establishing your program solely focused on ram breeding?
  • What the benefits and disadvantages of having various systems for testing wool?

Staple Strength 

There are huge differences between the sheep’s staple strength. The differences are largely due to the type of genes present in these animals and the kind of genes these animals pass on to their offspring or descendants.

The applicable areas of breeding to reduce the fibre diameter and make better the strength of the staple are explained and examined in an academic paper. The paper was written by Linda Hygate and presented at the 2001 conference of the Australian Sheep Veterinarians.

Improvement of Staple Strength Using Genetics to Enhance Its Cost-Effectiveness 

It is popular knowledge that you can now achieve the improvement of staple strength using certain selection strategies revolving around genetics. However, these may not be quite cost-effective in lots of cases. Researchers looked into several ways of improving staple strength at various projects; a method was particularly looked into, which is the use of hands-on methods.

In the results, the researcher saw that CVFD was an important accessory and pointer of adult staple strength, especially in wool sheep.