Relationship Between Purebred and Crossbred Performance for Number Born Alive and Number Born Dead

The purpose of this study was to estimate the relationship between purebred and crossbred sow reproductive performance. The relationship between purebred and crossbred performance is the foundation of all successful breeding programs. The heritability estimates for all traits ranged from 0.11 to 0.22. The estimated genetic correlations (standard error) for NBA and NBD between the first parity at the nucleus level and parities 2 and greater at the commercial level were 0.98 (±0.20) and 0.40 (±0.22), respectively. The results of this study indicate that a relationship between purebred and crossbred performance exists. Thus, selection on purebred individuals may result in improvement in crossbred performance

Sow Reproductive Stayability and Lifetime Traits

Sow longevity can be improved by selection, but genetic evaluations are challenged for implementation due to the long time interval required to collect complete lifetime data and low reliability of early indicator traits. Present study evaluated genetic parameters for several sow reproductive, stayability and longevity traits. Heritabilities for sow reproductive and longevity traits were estimated from 0.03 to 0.09. Heritabilities of the binary stayability traits were estimated from 0.00 to 0.14. Common litter effect had largest impact in early recorded traits. The results show that fitting the binary stayability traits to normal variance function give the lowest heritability estimates and the binomial variance function with logit function resulted in the highest estimates

Genomic regions associated with kyphosis in swine

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A back curvature defect similar to kyphosis in humans has been observed in swine herds. The defect ranges from mild to severe curvature of the thoracic vertebrate in split carcasses and has an estimated heritability of 0.3. The objective of this study was to identify genomic regions that affect this trait.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations performed with 198 SNPs and microsatellite markers in a Duroc-Landrace-Yorkshire resource population (U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, USMARC resource population) of swine provided regions of association with this trait on 15 chromosomes. Positional candidate genes, especially those involved in human skeletal development pathways, were selected for SNP identification. SNPs in 16 candidate genes were genotyped in an F2 population (n = 371) and the USMARC resource herd (n = 1,257) with kyphosis scores. SNPs in <it>KCNN2 </it>on SSC2, <it>RYR1 </it>and <it>PLOD1 </it>on SSC6 and <it>MYST4 </it>on SSC14 were significantly associated with kyphosis in the resource population of swine (<it>P </it>≤ 0.05). SNPs in <it>CER1 </it>and <it>CDH7 </it>on SSC1, <it>PSMA5 </it>on SSC4, <it>HOXC6 </it>and <it>HOXC8 </it>on SSC5, <it>ADAMTS18 </it>on SSC6 and <it>SOX9 </it>on SSC12 were significantly associated with the kyphosis trait in the F2 population of swine (<it>P </it>≤ 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that this kyphosis trait may be affected by several loci and that these may differ by population. Carcass value could be improved by effectively removing this undesirable trait from pig populations.</p

Organizational Culture and High Medicaid Nursing Homes Financial Performance

Background and Objectives: This paper investigates the relationship between organizational culture and financial performance in under-resourced nursing homes (85% or higher Medicaid residents). Research Design and Methods: We tested whether the type of organizational culture (clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchical) was associated with higher financial performance, measured by the operating margin. Survey data of 341 nursing home administrators were collected in 2017–2018 and merged with secondary datasets with facility and market characteristics. We used multiple regression analysis to test our hypotheses. Results: We found that a market culture was positively associated with higher operating margin. On the other hand, having a clan, hierarchical, or non-dominant culture was associated with lower financial performance, compared to a market culture. Discussion and Implications: Ensuring the financial viability of high-Medicaid nursing homes is important since they provide care to low-income residents and a high proportion of racial/ethnic minorities. Our findings suggest that having a market culture with an external orientation may be associated with better financial performance among these nursing homes

Genetic parameters for pelvic organ prolapse in purebred and crossbred sows

This study aimed to investigate genetic parameters for sow pelvic organ prolapse in purebred and crossbred herds. Pelvic organ prolapse was recorded as normal or prolapsed on the individual sow level across 32 purebred and 8 crossbred farms. In total, 75,162 purebred Landrace sows from a single maternal line were recorded between 2018 and 2023, while 18,988 commercial two-way crossbred (Landrace x Large White) sows were available between 2020 and 2023. There were 5,122,005 animals included in the pedigree. The prolapse in purebreds and crossbreds was considered two different traits in the model. Pedigrees of the crossbred sows were determined based on genotypes through parentage assignment. The average incidence rates were 1.81% and 3.93% for purebreds and crossbreds, respectively. The bivariate model incorporated fixed effects of parity group and region with random effects of contemporary group (farm and mating year and month at the first parity), additive genetic, and residual. Genetic parameter estimates were obtained using BLUPF90+ with the AIREML option. The estimated additive variance was larger in crossbreds than in purebreds. Estimates of heritability in the observed scale were 0.09 (0.006) for purebreds and 0.11 (0.014) for crossbreds, with a genetic correlation of 0.83 using a linear model. Results suggested that including data from crossbreds with higher incidence rate is beneficial and selection to reduce the prolapse incidence in purebred sow herds would also benefit commercial crossbred sow herds