Preliminary genetic parameters for clean fleece weight, fibre diameter, hogget weight and number of lambs born in merinos

Abstract

The Australian Sheep Industry Cooperative Research Centre has amalgamated data from 6 Merino sheep research resource flocks. The data base comprises 2,112 sires, 22,141 dams and up to 94,000 records for each of a comprehensive range of production traits with deep animal pedigrees. Genetic parameters and in particular genetic correlations are being estimated to fill identified knowledge gaps in the literature. This paper reports estimates of heritability and genetic and phenotypic correlations for clean fleece weight, fibre diameter, hogget weight and number of lambs born as well as other variance components. Results show that while estimates of heritabilities are similar to the mean estimates obtained from the literature review, there are some important differences for genetic correlations. The size and depth of pedigree in the data set has allowed complex models to be fitted and genetic correlations to be estimated with high precision.