| Due to various changes in the Austrian pig breeding industry, comprising housing restrictions, ethical demands of consumers, political concerns and global market changes, the Austrian pig breeders have to revise their breeding goals concerning functional traits. The aims of the project are to define maternal abilities by breeders and to implement the defined parameters into routine recording. The ability of movement and the conformation of sows will be scored twice to verify the best time to score animals. Furthermore, the vitality of piglets will be considered. Therefore, a vitality index will be set up, including different information of piglets (weight, heterogeneity of litters, etc.). This index should be implemented into routine genetic evaluation to improve piglet survival and piglet welfare. Genetic parameters will be estimated. In order to understand the economic impact of the new trait(s),calculations concerning the breeding programs using Z-Plan will be done. In this project functional traits are of interest. However, the conventional way to estimate breeding values is not sufficient enough to increase genetic gain. Therefore, sows will be genotyped to optimize genetic evaluation and to improve reliabilities of estimated breeding values. To get reliable results, at least data of 1050 Large White and Landrace sows will be recorded. The information of around 30.240 piglets will be included in the analyzes.
All the results (definition and recording of maternal abilities, genetic parameters, genomic information, etc. ) will be included into routine genetic evaluation to genetically optimize the Austrian pig population, to increase animal welfare and to meet farmers economic demands. |