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Estimating Heritability of Hereford Cow Weights^{1, 2,}

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg 24061

Abstract

Estimates were calculated from both adjusted and unadjusted weights of 1,584 cows in 17 representative Virginia Hereford herds. Adjusted weights were adjusted for year, herd, flesh condition, sire of cow, age, days postpartum and the interactions of year x age and year x condition. Variations of this basic model were used to analyze several subsets of the data, however, because the sires of some cows were unknown, there were repeat observations on some cows in two herds, some cows did not wean calves the years weights were taken or because of computer inability to handle the large number of sire groups.

Heritability estimates ranged from 0.52±.16 to 1.00±.16. The lowest h² was obtained from an indirect method (Harvey, 1970 as modified by Bailey et al., 1971) based on the sire component of variance calculated from data set 3 consisting of 854 cows by 210 sires. This low estimate probably resulted from a poor estimate of the sire component of variance.

¹ Published with approval of the Director of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Research Division.

² The authors express their appreciation to the members of the Virginia BCIA who permitted them to use their cattle, facilities and records in this study.

³ This study was part of a thesis submitted by the senior author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science degree.

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