The oldest of all British breeds of sheep, it has an ideal body conformation for meat production.
A fertile heifer is very receptive to bulls and has good body conformation.
Sexually matured heifers are detectable at three years of age, have good body conformation and are receptive to bulls during estrus.
Our aim was to investigate the genetic correlations between CH4 production and body conformation, fertility, and health traits in dairy cows.
The heritability of CH4 was 0.25, and ranged from 0.02 to 0.07 for fertility and health traits, and from 0.17 to 0.74 for body conformation traits.
Further research with a larger data set should be performed to more accurately establish how CH4 relates to fertility, health, and body conformation traits in dairy cattle.
A genome scan for chromosomal regions influencing body conformation traits was conducted for a population of Spanish Churra dairy sheep following a daughter design.
According to most camel herdsmen in the study area, sexually mature heifers are detected in the herds by their age (42%), body conformation (54%) and reception to bulls during estrus (54%).
Data were collected from 10 commercial Holstein herds in Denmark, including 5,758 cows with records for body conformation traits, 7,390 for fertility traits, 7,439 for health traits, and 1,397 with individual CH4 measurements.
These results show that selection for good body condition, body conformation, and optimal milk production is possible and their genetic associations reported here will be useful for designing Swiss breeding goals.
To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first report of QTL for body conformation traits in dairy sheep; further studies will be needed to confirm and redefine the linkage associations reported herein.
