The effects of inbreeding on litter traits in Hampshire dams
In Swedish pig production, the use of three breed crosses is the most common and Hampshire is one of the most common breeds to use as the father breed. Hampshire are bred for its meat quality, feed conversion ratio and high growth rate, but the Swedish purebred population is quite small, and inbreed...
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| Formato: | Second cycle, A2E |
| Lenguaje: | sueco Inglés |
| Publicado: |
2018
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| Acceso en línea: | https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/13861/ |
| Sumario: | In Swedish pig production, the use of three breed crosses is the most common and Hampshire is one of the most common breeds to use as the father breed. Hampshire are bred for its meat quality, feed conversion ratio and high growth rate, but the Swedish purebred population is quite small, and inbreeding could be a problem. However, inbreeding is believed to affect traits connected to fitness, such as litter size and health traits. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse how the total number of piglets born (TNB), the number of piglets born alive (NBA) and the percent of stillborn piglets (SB) are affected by dam and litter inbreeding in the Hampshire breed. The results show that all the analysed traits are negatively affected by inbreeding. The dam inbreeding had an effect of -0.173 for TNB and -0.028 for NBA while the litter inbreeding had an effect of -0.417 for TNB and -0.286 for NBA. This is for each 10 % increase in inbreeding. Although, the SB showed a decreasing trend, meaning the percent of stillborn piglets are lower with increasing trend of inbreeding but the only significant factor for this trait was the nucleus herd. This could mean that the management of the animals have a larger impact on this trait than inbreeding has. The inbreeding level has also been increasing the last 10 years in the Hampshire breed and if it continues to increase this could have a negatively impact on the reproductive traits and maybe, in the end, also the meat quality traits. |
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