Increasing Sheep Meat Production Efficiency and Animal Welfare by Selection for Temperament
| Project start date: | 01 January 2003 |
| Project end date: | 01 May 2005 |
| Publication date: | 01 May 2005 |
| Project status: | Completed |
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Summary
Selection for sheep which are better able to adapt to the normal range of production challenges has the potential to yield improvements in both production efficiency and animal welfare. This, in part, can be achieved via the selection for temperament. The primary aims of this study were to develop and evaluate practical tests for the on-farm assessment of temperament in sheep and secondly, to estimate the genetic parameters for temperament and the genetic correlations with production traits. Two behavioural tests, the isolation box test (IBT) and the measurement of flight time (FT) were evaluated. The repeatability of IBT (0.4 - 0.76) was significantly higher than FT (
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| Project manager: | David Beatty |
| Primary researcher: | University of Western Australia |
