Examination of the genetic relation between Hungarian Merino stocks

Abstract

Genetic connectedness of the Hungarian Merino sheep population was examined between 1979 and 1995 through the use of rams across different flocks. The output file (mnagy.dbf) can be found at the same site. The average number of rams used by the flocks during the period examined was 35. Among the 94 flocks there were 4371 possible connections where across-use of the rams could be carried out. Only 511 cases (11.7%) with greater connection than zero were found. On totalling the results to county level it can be concluded that the average proportion of the across-flock use of the rams was 23%. Among the counties this value was considerably lower at only 7%. The use of the rams across the flocks of different counties was the highest in the case of the neighbouring counties and decreased as the distance between the counties increased. The flocks of Hajdu-Bihar, Pest and Szolnok counties showed the best results regarding the across-use of the rams among the flocks. By choosing 4 flocks from each county connectedness could be improved greatly without diminishing the total number of rams used in these counties. As the connectedness of these 12 flocks was reasonable it can be suggested that the animal model could be experimentally introduced in the breeding value estimation procedure for the above region. The authors developed an original method which can be applied by running a Foxpro 2.6 for Windows program (matr.prg) available at ftp://major.date.hu/pub/cikkek.