seven breeds, direct-, maternal-, total heritability, direct-maternal genetic
Abstract
Population genetic analysis was performed on data from 42,695 purebred beef calves from seven breeds born from 1981 to 2005 in Hungary. Animal model were used for the estimations. Sire, herd, age of dam at calving, birth year, season of birth and sex of calf had significant effects on 205-day calf weaning weight for each breed. Direct heritability value estimates (h2d) were 0.18 to 0.61, the maternal heritability values (h2m) from 0.07 to 0.38, and the total heritability values were between 0.09 and 0.35. The direct-maternal genetic correlations (rdm) were high and negative for all the breeds varying from -0.63 to -0.88.
