Genetic evaluation of dairy sheep in a New Zealand flock

Genetic parameters for total lactation yields of milk, fat, protein, and somatic cell score in New Zealand dairy goats

“…Dairy goat farming in New Zealand is a profitable industry able to access niche markets for high value products. The New Zealand Dairy Goat Cooperative's members collectively manage 80% of the nation's dairy goat population (Scholtens et al, 2017). The cooperative is the leading international manufacturer of goat milk nutritional powders for infants and young children (Stafford & Prosser, 2016).…”

“…Breed had a significant effect (p < .0001) on milking traits, with does of unknown breed producing the greatest MY, FY, and PY. As the majority of dairy goats in New Zealand are Saanen (Scholtens et al, 2017), and considering the effect of breed on milk production, it is likely that these high producing "unknown" animals are of Saanen origin. Despite relatively large breed effects on MY, there were no significant differences between SCS for ANT and Saanen does.…”

Non-genetic and genetic effects related to birth and weaning weight in crossbred dairy goats

“…Dwyer et al (2016) indicated that the main risk factors for mortality in small ruminants are low birth weight, particularly owing to poor maternal nutrition during gestation, dystocia, litter size and genetics. Moreover, the genetic correlations among the live weight measures at different ages of the animals are strong positive (Jembere et al, 2017), and the genetic correlations between live weight and milk production in dairy goats have been reported moderate positive (0.47) (Morris et al, 2011;Scholtens et al, 2018). Additionally, quantification of the pre-weaning performance of small ruminants from different birth and rearing types has multiple uses including providing informative biological parameters for the development of bioeconomic models but also in farmbased real-time decision support tools (McHugh et al, 2017).…”

Estimates of Genetic Parameters for Milk, the Occurrence of and Susceptibility to Clinical Lameness and Claw Disorders in Dairy Goats

“…These farmers had witnessed lameness within their herds and were interested in reducing its prevalence on their farms. Two selected farms had herd sizes around the national average of 750 milking does [ 16 ], while one farm was significantly larger, with over 1600 milking does.…”

“…There were a few reference sires between farms, where farm A shared one sire with farm B and three sires with farm C. There was one sire shared between farms B and C. The goat breeds on the three farms consisted mainly of Saanen crosses with other breeds, such as Toggenburg, Alpine, and Nubian [ 16 ]. Despite many crosses within the herd, heterosis was not estimated as the data input for the breed information of the animal, sire, and dam and was not precisely recorded within the pedigree.…”