Farmer's Weekly

How to get your breeding right

In addition to having good genetics, the process of breeding livestock requires planning and monitoring. Good breeders try to improve traits such as feed conversion potential (the efficiency with which animals convert any given quantity of feed into meat or milk), offspring growth rates and longevity.

Other desirable traits are inherent hardiness to drought (surviving on less food) and resistance to parasites and diseases.

Geneticists have even discovered

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