Relationships among temperament and production traits of pigs

Abstract

Measures of temperament and production traits were analysed from 4,879 nucleus pigs. Genetic parameters for flight time (FT), standard deviation of multiple weights recorded over 20 seconds (SDWT), average daily gain (ADG), back fat (BF) and muscle depth (MD) were estimated. Flight time (0.20 ± 0.04) and SDWT (0.11 ± 0.03) were both heritable and negatively genetically correlated (-0.46 ± 0.14). Both temperament traits had favourable low to moderate genetic correlations with ADG, positive and negative respectively (FT: 0.21 ± 0.16; SDWT: -0.29 ± 0.19), but had unfavourable correlations with BF (FT: 0.26 ± 0.11; SDWT: -0.22 ± 0.14) of a similar magnitude. The genetic relationships between FT and SDWT with MD were negligible. All genetic correlation estimates had large standard errors. The results indicate that further research into FT and SDWT for pigs could lead to their use as selection criteria.