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Genetic and Economic aspects of Selecting for Lamb Carcass Quality^{1, 2,}

University of California, Davis³

Abstract

The problem of how to make genetic improvement in lamb carcass and meat quality is an important one to the industry, but one for which many relevant questions are unanswered or only partly answered. The greatest scarcity of information of the desired reliability for decision making is probably in the area of relative economic values of carcass and other production characteristics. Also extremely important but at present largely lacking is information on genetic correlations among these, especially with respect to the kinds of problems likely to be encountered as a result of intense directional selection for specific traits. Accurate estimates of heritability of lamb carcass traits are also lacking, although this may be a less serious problem than the first two mentioned. We can probably assume, from the limited information on sheep and from knowledge of other species, that lamb carcass traits have medium to high heritability.

¹ Invited paper presented at the Sheep Special Lives toe Session,57th Annual Meeting, American Society of Anim; Science, East Lansing, Michigan.

² The author wishes to express his sincere appreciation to L.D. Van Vleck, for assistance with the computer program used in calculating, expected genetic gains in tables 2 and 3; to G.M. Spurlock, for permission to quote the results in tables 4; and to Maurice Shelton, for his helpful comments on the paper.

³ Department of Animal Husbandary.