Crossbreeding of dairy cattle in Kenya. An economic evaluation
- Publikations-Art
- Weitere Veröffentlichung
- Autoren
- Kahi,A.K.; Nitter,G.; Arendonk van.J.A.M.; Thorpe,W.; Gall,C.F.
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 1999
- Veröffentlicht in
- Proceedings 50th Annual meeting of the European Association for Animal Production
- Serie/Bezeichnung
- 50th
- Tagungsname
- 50th Annual meeting of the European Association for Animal Production
- Tagungsort
- Zürich/Switzerland
- Tagungsdatum
- 22.8.-26.8. 1999
Data on accumulated life performance of crosses of Ayrshire (A), Brown Swiss (B), Friesian (F) and Sahiwal (S) cattle collected over a 21-year period from a dairy ranch in the lowland tropics of Kenya were analysed to estimate additive and non-additive genetic effects on economic performance and to predict performance of alternative crossbreeding strategies. For profit per day of herdlife, F was superior to the other breeds for additive breed effect. The B additive breed effect was not significantly different from that of A. Dominance effect for profit in the cross B x S was substantial (25 %) and significant. The additive x additive interaction was negative in all the crosses. Profit would be lowest in (ABFS)Syn and highest in (3/4F 1/4S)Syn. F x S would be the second-best strategy and would attain 92 % of the expected (3/4F 1/4S)Syn profit while (FS)Syn would attain 83 %. In the tropics, potential economic benefits may be derived by use of the F breed for continuous crossbreeding in production systems with adequate management standards or in the other production systems (e.g., smallholder sector), from the development of an F-based two-breed synthetic breed.