You are wanting to breed a herd of super-cattle, which will be heavier than othe

Question

You are wanting to breed a herd of super-cattle, which will be heavier than other cattle in Nebraska. You start with a population with a mean weight of 1450 lbs. You select the top 20% of your cattle for weight, which has a mean of 1550 lbs. You then breed only the selected cattle together and observe that the mean weight of the offspring is 1475 lbs.

a. What is the narrow-sense heritability for cattle weight for this population of cattle?

b. Your neighbor’s herd has a narrow-sense heritability of 40% (or 0.40) for cattle weight. Which herd, yours or the neighbor’s, would be best to use to breed the herd of super-cattle?

Explanation / Answer

Answer a. is h2 = 0.25

Answer b. My neighbour's herd would be the best to use because his herd’s narrow sense heritability is more than of mine

Explanation:

Narrow sense Heritability = h2

h2 = M2 - M / M1 – M

h2 = M2 - M / M1 - M

In the above question rump size of pig population is:

Now if we calculate-

h2 = 1475-1450/1550-1450, h2 = 25/100 = 1/4 or h2 = 0.25

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