Abstract

Feed accounts for a large proportion of costs in dairy farming. Differences exist in how efficiently individual animals convert energy to milk, and genetic improvement of feed efficiency could play an important role in reducing feed costs per unit of output. Previous work has indicated a positive correlation between feed intake and body weight, therefore these traits should be incorporated into a multi trait selection index. This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of using single step genomic selection to estimate breeding values for feed efficiency and body weight in a dairy goat herd. Accuracy of genomic breeding values were low for this population (0.28 for both traits), however records have only been collected for the last year, and the validation population only contained 320 individuals. Accuracy is expected to increase as the reference population containing related animals increases. Keywords: goats; genomics; genetics; feed intake; body weight

Suzanne Desire, Sebastian Mucha, Mike Coffey, Raphael Mrode, Jim Broadbent, Joanne Conington

Proceedings of the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, Volume Species - Caprine, , 818, 2018