Breeding objectives for Red Maasai and Dorper sheep in Kenya—A participatory approach

The Red Maasai sheep breed is under threat due to indiscriminate crossbreeding and strategies are needed to conserve and improve the breed. The aim of this study was to understand farmers’ preferences for important traits of flocks of Red Maasai, Dorper and crosses in two different areas, Amboseli and Isinya, in Kenya. Farmers identified three ewes that represented the best, average, and poorest within its breed group of each farm and gave reasons for their ranking. The most important traits were body size and growth rate and thereafter milk yield. The Red Maasai was preferred for its better reproduction and tolerance against diseases and drought. In the harshest area, Amboseli, all breed groups had about the same body weight, whereas in Isinya, where conditions are better and farmers are more market oriented, Dorper and crosses had superior weights

Alternative learning technologies for developing capacity in animal breeding and genetics in middle and low income countries

In today’s world where scientific progress and development of new knowledge is increasing rapidly, middle and low income countries must be able to train and retain versatile researchers in the field of animal breeding and genetics able to analyze, adapt and use technologies, and possess strong social skills. A modernized blended learning approach with flexible organizational structures that allow the integration of face to face with virtual learning environments using various e-learning technologies needs to be adopted. However, electronic learning tools addressing situations and needs for animal genetic resource management in middle and low income countries are few, and several challenges hinder wide adoption of e-learning. This paper presents some experiences with e-learning tools in middle and low income countries, outlines opportunities for enhanced adoption of e-learning and identifies some gaps and questions that still need to be addressed to facilitate e-learning

Reproductive performance of Norwegian cattle from 1985 to 2005: trends and seasonality

Declining reproductive performance is a serious breeding concern in many countries. To reveal the situation in Norwegian cattle, trends in reproductive performance were studied using insemination reports from 1985 to 2005 and data based on herd recording files from 1989 to 2005. The total number of first services was 469.765 in 1985 declining to 335.712 in 2005. The number of recorded herds and animals declined from 21.588 to 14.718 and 360.289 to 309.452 from 1989 to 2005, respectively. Sixty days non-return rate after single inseminations (NR60) increased from 68.1 in 1985 to 72.7% in 2005 (p < 0.001) and the number of services per inseminated animal (NIA) decreased from 1.8 to 1.6 (p < 0.001) from 1985 to 2005. However, return rates 0–3 days post insemination (RR0-3) increased from 6 to 12% in the same period (p < 0.001). NR60 was higher and the RR0-3 was lower in the summer season compared to the winter season during the whole period. A fertility index (FS), has been calculated from the herd recording files each year from 1989 to 2005. The average FS-index did not show a significant trend and the calving interval was also fairly constant between 12.4 and 12.6 months during this period. The average interval from calving to first and last insemination, respectively, increased from a low of 79 and 102 days in 1990 to a high of 86 and 108 days in 2005. Both intervals were consistently longer for cows in first lactation than for cows in later lactations. The percentage of inseminated animals reported culled because of poor fertility decreased from 6.0% in 1989 to 4.6% in 1996 and thereafter again increased to 6% in 2005. In conclusion, most fertility measures, mainly comprising the Norwegian Red (NRF) breed, show a relatively high level of reproductive performance with a positive or a relatively constant trend during the last two decades

Measuring Health Utilities in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

BACKGROUND: The objective of this review was to evaluate the use of all direct and indirect methods used to estimate health utilities in both children and adolescents. Utilities measured pre- and post-intervention are combined with the time over which health states are experienced to calculate quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). Cost-utility analyses (CUAs) estimate the cost-effectiveness of health technologies based on their costs and benefits using QALYs as a measure of benefit. The accurate measurement of QALYs is dependent on using appropriate methods to elicit health utilities. OBJECTIVE: We sought studies that measured health utilities directly from patients or their proxies. We did not exclude those studies that also included adults in the analysis, but excluded those studies focused only on adults. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We evaluated 90 studies from a total of 1,780 selected from the databases. 47 (52%) studies were CUAs incorporated into randomised clinical trials; 23 (26%) were health-state utility assessments; 8 (9%) validated methods and 12 (13%) compared existing or new methods. 22 unique direct or indirect calculation methods were used a total of 137 times. Direct calculation through standard gamble, time trade-off and visual analogue scale was used 32 times. The EuroQol EQ-5D was the most frequently-used single method, selected for 41 studies. 15 of the methods used were generic methods and the remaining 7 were disease-specific. 48 of the 90 studies (53%) used some form of proxy, with 26 (29%) using proxies exclusively to estimate health utilities. CONCLUSIONS: Several child- and adolescent-specific methods are still being developed and validated, leaving many studies using methods that have not been designed or validated for use in children or adolescents. Several studies failed to justify using proxy respondents rather than administering the methods directly to the patients. Only two studies examined missing responses to the methods administered with respect to the patients' ages

Effects of long-time series of data on genetic evaluations for performance of Swedish Warmblood riding horses

For Swedish Warmblood sport horses, breeding values (BVs) are predicted using a multiple-trait animal model with results from competitions and young horse performance tests. Data go back to the beginning of the 1970s, and earlier studies have indicated that some of the recorded traits have changed through the years. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of including all performance data or excluding the older ones compared to a bivariate model (BM) considering performance traits in early and late periods as separate traits. The bivariate approach was assumed to give the most correct BVs for the actual breeding population. Competition results in dressage and show jumping for almost 40 000 horses until 2006 were available. For riding horse quality test (RHQT), data of 14 000 horses judged between 1973 and 2007 were used. Genetic correlations of 0.69 to 1.00 were estimated between traits recorded at different time periods (RHQT data) or different birth year groups (competition data). A cross-validation study and comparison of BVs using different sets of data showed that most accurate and similar results were obtained when BVs were predicted from either the BM or the univariate model including all data from the beginning of the recording. We recommend using all data and applying the univariate model to minimise the computational efforts for genetic evaluations and for provision of reliable BVs for as many horses as possible