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Heritability of phenotypic udder traits to improve resilience to mastitis in Texel ewes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2018

R. E. Crump ,
S. Cooper ,
E. M. Smith ,
C. Grant  and
L. E. Green Open the ORCID record for L. E. Green [Opens in a new window]
R. E. Crump
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences and Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
S. Cooper
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
E. M. Smith
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
C. Grant
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
L. E. Green
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences and Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
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Abstract

There are no estimates of the heritability of phenotypic udder traits in suckler sheep, which produce meat lambs, and whether these are associated with resilience to mastitis. Mastitis is a common disease which damages the mammary gland and reduces productivity. The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of collecting udder phenotypes, their heritability and their association with mastitis in suckler ewes. Udder and teat conformation, teat lesions, intramammary masses (IMM) and litter size were recorded from 10 Texel flocks in Great Britain between 2012 and 2014; 968 records were collected. Pedigree data were obtained from an online pedigree recording system. Univariate quantitative genetic parameters were estimated using animal and sire models. Linear mixed models were used to analyse continuous traits and generalised linear mixed models were used to analyse binary traits. Continuous traits had higher heritabilities than binary with teat placement and teat length heritability (h2) highest at 0.35 (SD 0.04) and 0.42 (SD 0.04), respectively. Udder width, drop and separation heritabilities were lower and varied with udder volume. The heritabilities of IMM and teat lesions (sire model) were 0.18 (SD 0.12) and 0.17 (SD 0.11), respectively. All heritabilities were sufficiently high to be in a selection programme to increase resilience to mastitis in the population of Texel sheep. Further studies are required to investigate genetic relationships between traits and to determine whether udder traits predict IMM, and the potential benefits from including traits in a selection programme to increase resilience to chronic mastitis.

Keywords

geneticsintramammary infectionmeat sheeppedigreeselection
Type
Research Article
Information
animal , Volume 13 , Issue 8 , August 2019 , pp. 1570 - 1575
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2018 

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Footnotes

†

Present address: College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston B15 2TT, UK. E-mail: l.e.green.1@bham.ac.uk

a

Present address: The British Texel Sheep Society Ltd, Stoneleigh Park, Kenilworth, CV8 2LG, UK.

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