Heritabilities of body length, depth, width, fore cannon length, fold score, and mutton score in Australian Merino sheep

Summary

Data for body length, depth, width, fore cannon length, fold score and mutton score were collected on two groups of Peppin Merino ewe lambs. The experimental animals comprised 284 ewe lambs born in the spring of 1951 (group ‘A’) and 273 born in the autumn of 1952 (group ‘W’) at the Trangie Agricultural Experiment Station of the New South Wales Department of Agriculture.

The estimates for heritability calculated by the method of intra-sire correlation for body depth, length, width, fore cannon length, fold score and mutton score are: 0.00, 0.00, 0.08, 0.16, 0.28 and 0.28 respectively in group ‘W’ and 0.29, 0.10, 0.48, 0.30, 0.79 and 0.10 in group ‘A’ and 0.01, 0.00, 0.27, 0.24, 0.46 and 0.13 in the combined groups (A & W). Estimate for fold score calculated by sire-offspring regression for both the groups is 0.34.