Genetic analyses of field-recorded growth and carcass traits for Swedish beef cattle

To investigate the possibility of using carcass data from commercial slaughterhouses for the genetic evaluation of beef cattle, genetic parameters for carcass traits and their correlations with field-recorded growth traits were estimated. The data comprised information on carcass weight (CWT), carcass fleshiness (FLESH) and carcass fatness grade (FAT) according to the (S)EUROP scale for 5870, 1509 and 1119 young bulls of the Charolais, Hereford and Simmental breeds, respectively. In addition, information on field-recorded pre-weaning gain (WG) and post-weaning gain (PWG) was available for more than 23 200 and 15 700 bulls, respectively. The breeds were analysed separately using BLUP animal models. The results showed that it is feasible to include field-recorded carcass traits in the genetic evaluation. The estimated direct heritabilities of FLESH, FAT, CWT, WG and PWG were in the ranges 0.21-0.39, 0.23-0.45, 0.42-0.70, 0.31-0.41 and 0.29-0.42, respectively. The genetic correlations differed between breeds, though for all breeds studied the genetic correlations with pre-weaning gain were weaker for FAT and FLESH than for CWT. The effect of selection on pre-weaning gain appeared to be stronger for CWT than for the other traits. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.