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Growth and carcass characteristics of crossbred (Mule) sheep

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2017

A. M. van Heelsum ,
R. M. Lewis ,
W. Haresign ,
D. Jones ,
S. Williams ,
M. H. Davies  and
O. Davies
A. M. van Heelsum
Affiliation:
Animal Biology Division, SAC, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK
R. M. Lewis
Affiliation:
Animal Biology Division, SAC, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK
W. Haresign
Affiliation:
Institute of Rural Studies, Llanbadarn Campus, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3AL, UK
D. Jones
Affiliation:
Institute of Rural Studies, Llanbadarn Campus, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3AL, UK
S. Williams
Affiliation:
Institute of Rural Studies, Llanbadarn Campus, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3AL, UK
M. H. Davies
Affiliation:
ADAS Rosemaund, Preston Wynne, Hereford HR1 3PG, UK
O. Davies
Affiliation:
ADAS Pwllpeiran, Cwmystwyth, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 4AB, UK
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Extract

With increasing emphasis in the meat sector on better and more consistent quality, carcass leanness and conformation is now an important issue for sheep breeders. In 1999, only 47% of all carcasses in the UK met the target specifications for weight, fat and conformation (MLC, 2000), highlighting the potential for improvement. In the current stratified crossbreeding system, crossbred wether lambs are a by-product of the production of dam line ewes for the lowland sector. If their carcass quality is sufficient, they can give a valuable boost to the economics of the breeding programme. Genetic improvement of carcass quality in crossing sire breeds would benefit the crossbred wethers, as well as filter through to the terminal sire cross lambs produced by the crossbred ewes. This work aims to assess the influence of selection index and live conformation score of crossing sires (in this case Bluefaced Leicesters) on growth and carcass quality traits of their crossbred progeny, as a first step towards designing a genetic improvement programme for crossing sire sheep.

Type
Poster Presentations
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science , Volume 2002 , 2002 , pp. 195
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Science 2002

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References

Cameron, N.D. and Thompson, R. 1986. Design of multivariate selection experiments to estimate genetic parameters. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 72: 466–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MLC, 2000. Sheep Yearbook. MLC, Milton Keynes, UK.Google Scholar