The course will mostly concentrate on growth, litter size, egg and milk production. Subjects in the course are selection, biological limits, correlated response, undesirable side effects, indicator traits, genotype environment interactions, etc. The course will help to understand practical breeding problems and their interactions with husbandry and nutrition. It will also help to define traits in the breeding goal and the selection index more efficiently . In this course the basic principles of quantitative genetics are taught and applied to animal breeding.
Animal breeding is aimed at the genetic improvement of farm animals.
This improvement takes place based on a pre-set goal, i.e. the breeding goal. An important part of this course deals with the theory that describes how this goal can be reached as efficiently as possible, that is the selection index theory. To construct a selection index, knowledge about a number of genetic parameters is required. Therefore, some time will be spent on the estimation of genetic parameters as well. The aim of this course is to gain insight in the methods that are used in animal breeding to genetically improve farm animals.