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Selection for Meat Production in Sheep—Results of a Progeny Test

University of California,^,2 Davis 95616

Abstract

Means of improving the efficiency of meat production and product quality are being actively sought by the sheep industry. The fact that variation in growth rate appears to account for more of the variation in amount of lean meat produced in a given period of time than does variation in proportion of lean in the carcass, and the greater ease and accuracy of measuring the former in live animals, suggest that selection programs should place more emphasis on growth rate than on measures of carcass composition. This subject has been discussed by Bradford (1967).

The present study was designed to provide estimates from an actual progeny test of the relative contribution of variation in growth rate and in carcass composition to response to selection for meat production, and to obtain information on the relative accuracy of different measures of growth rate and carcass cutability on rams for prediction of progeny performance.

¹ The authors express their sincere appreciation to Mr. W. S. Russell, Animal Breeding Research Organization, Edinburgh for his assistance with the analyses of the data, to Mr. Dante Calvi of Bodega, California on whose ranch the lambs were raised and to Mr. Nelson Adams of the California Agricultural Extension Service.

² Department of Animal Science.