Development of an animal model for across-herd genetic evaluation of number born alive in swine.

An animal model and computer software were developed to conduct across-herd genetic evaluations using data from producers participating in the Sow Productivity Index program of the American Yorkshire Club. The final data set consisted of 61,596 litter records from 1986 to early 1990. The animal model included fixed contemporary group effects and random additive direct, service sire, permanent environmental, and residual effects. Additive genetic relationships among animals were included. A separate relationship matrix for service sires and their sires was also included. A data set similar to the Yorkshire field data was simulated to use in testing the animal model. The simulated data set consisted of 40 herds, each with 120 reproducing dams and either four or five sires. Six generations of simulated data were produced, resulting in 20,605 litter records. These records were then evaluated using the animal model for number of pigs born alive. Finally, correlations between the true breeding values from the simulation and the predicted breeding values were computed. The correlation between the 918 true and predicted sire breeding values was considerably lower for the animal model without a service sire effect than when it was included (.53 vs .74, respectively). However, the difference was cut in half (.66 vs .77) when only sires with greater than five daughter records were included. The high accuracy of the animal model with a random service sire effect indicates that the proposed model adequately accounts for the variation found in records for number of pigs born alive.