Are you submitting all the birth data?
Angus Australia has a number of informative resources available to support Members in the collection of birth traits. Birth traits play an important role in many breeding programs and by collecting the trait Members get more informed EBVs which benefits them and their clients breeding program.
Traits Collected at Birth
Birth is where an animal’s performance recording journey begins, over the first couple days of an animal’s life there is the opportunity to collect birth weight, gestation length and calving difficulty scores.
Getting the value from Estimated Breeding Values
Making more informed breeding decisions is crucial to any breeding program and by contributing performance information, Members are adding to the value of the EBVs for them and their clients.
Research Selection Indexes
The research selection indexes have been developed for industry review and feedback prior to potential implementation into the TransTasman Angus Cattle Evaluation. Updates have been made to the selection indexes to ensure they continue to represent more scenarios and parameters and utilise the most current analysis tools.
Aligning with your program
When utilising selection indexes, members are advised to select the Selection index that is most aligned with the system their operation operates in.
Using Selection Indexes
Angus Selection Indexes should be used as an initial filtering tool for potential selection candidates, before specific breeding objective criteria is applied.
Providing balanced selection decisions
The selection indexes assist in making “balanced” selection decisions, taking into account the relevant growth, carcase & fertility attributes of each animal to identify animals that are most suitable for use within a particular commercial enterprise.
Providing balanced selection decisions
The selection indexes assist in making “balanced” selection decisions, taking into account the relevant growth, carcase & fertility attributes of each animal to identify animals that are most suitable for use within a particular commercial enterprise.
What is a Selection Index?
Selection indexes aid in the selection of animals for use within a breeding program where there are several traits of economic or functional importance by providing an overall “score” of an animal’s genetic value.
Introduction to Research Breeding Values & Research
RBVs (Research Breeding Values) are EBVs in development. RBVs are produced as part of the development of EBVs for new traits, which enable the refinement of both the performance recording information and the analytical software used in their calculation.
