Relationship between sire’s estimated breeding values for production traits and ranking of sires in Sahiwal cattle

Abstract

The present investigation was undertaken on 1367 first lactation records of Sahiwal cattle maintained at GLF, Chak Ganjaria, Lucknow over a period of 71 years (1944-2014). The study was conducted for estimation of breeding value of sires for different first lactation traits using daughter’s average, least-squares and best linear unbiased prediction methods. Efficiency of different methods was estimated by rank correlation and product moment correlation. The rank correlation coefficients and product moment coefficient between the sires evaluated by various methods were very highly significant (P<0.01) for first lactation milk yield, first lactation length and age at first calving. The comparison of different method of sire evaluation for first lactation traits showed that all the methods are equally efficient to rank the sires for these traits.