Browsing by Subject "breeding value"

In Finland the evaluation of young Icelandic horses is relatively more common than the evaluation of adults. The goal of this study was to find out about heritabilities and genetic correlations of conformation and movement traits evaluated in young horse linear assessment with horses of age 1-2-year-old. Record data contained the assessment of 354 horses from years 2010-2023. From the assessed traits 18 were selected for calculations. These traits included conformation and movement traits as well as one temperament trait. DMU-program was used to estimate the result using REML-method. Linear model used for all traits contained age, sex, and the assessment event as fixed effects, even though not all of these had statistically significant effect on all traits. Heritability values ranged from 0 to 0,86. For two traits the heritability was zero and only eight traits had a statistically significant heritability value. The genetic correlation was very high between several traits. The average breeding values for eight traits slightly increased over years when observed per birth year. 10 stallions with the most assessed offsprings were selected for further breeding value study. From the breeding values it was possible to observe differences between the stallions. Accuracies of the breeding value estimates were 0,6-0,9 for the traits with higher heritability and 0,3-0,8 for the lower ones, depending on the trait and individual. The results from this study are promising, although it a is bit difficult to compare them to similar previously done studies due to the lack of them and due to the fact that heritability values are tied to the population. It would be good to repeat this study with a bigger dataset to minimize the high standard errors and thus improve the accuracy of the results. The breeding values indicate that information from conformation and movement evaluation from young horses could be used as a tool of selection, but it would be good to first study how the results of young horses are connected to the results from breeding assessment of adult horses.