Performance evaluation of Sahiwal cattle maintained at farm and field conditions
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Date
2017-07
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
The present investigation was aimed to study the effects of genetic and non-genetic factors on production and reproduction traits, predicting the first lactation milk yield on the basis of first peak yield, first service period and days attain to first peak yield in different combinations. The records of 308 Sahiwal cows, sired by 38 bulls spread over a period of 32 years (1981-2012), maintained at Instructional Dairy Farm, Nagla of Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) and animal maintained under AICRP on cattle Sahiwal under field conditions. The data maintained at Chak Ganjaria farm, Lucknow were also utilized for the study. The effects of non genetic factors of these traits were studied by least square analysis for nonorthogonal data, using by the technique described by Hervey (1990). The least squares means for AFC, FCI, FSP, FLL, FLMY, 305 FLMY, FDP, FPY and DAFPY were found to be 1281.89±15.57 days, 426.70±8.53 days, 140.85±8.90 days, 290.42±5.57 days, 1927.50±36.68 kg, 1965.05±27.30 kg, 136.28±8.78 days, 11.15±0.39 kg and 41.78±2.97 days respectively. The heritability estimates of corresponding traits were observed as 0.45±0.12, 0.25±0.07, 0.25±0.09, 0.25±0.11, 0.25±0.07, 0.37±0.12, 0.44±0.15, 0.16±0.03 and 0.19±0.04 respectively. The traits first peak yield and days attain to first peak yield indicated low genetic base. However, other traits of study were medium heritable traits. Highly significant effect (P<0.01) of sire was observed in all the traits, while season was found to influence the first lactation milk yield and 305 days first lactation milk yield at 5% level of significance. The period of calving significantly influenced age at first calving and first peak yield while FCI, FSP, FLL, FLMY, 305 FLMY, FDP and DAFPY were reported to show non-significant effect of period. The highly significant effect of farm was found on all traits under study at 1% level except first lactation length and days attain to first peak yield traits. Almost all the genetic and phenotypic correlations of different production and reproduction traits with other traits under the study were found in desired direction. On the basis of the regression analysis it could be concluded that the first peak yield in combination with days attain to first peak yield may be used in prediction the FLMY in Sahiwal cattle.
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