ESTIMATES OF HERITABILITY AND REPEATABILITY FOR GROWTH TRAITS IN THREE BREEDS OF RABBIT

Abstract

Data on 169 progeny from 3 breeds {New Zealand white (NZW), Chinchilla (CHC) and Dutch (DUT)} of rabbits were used to estimate heritability and repeatability for growth traits. The growth traits considered were body weight (BW), ear length (EL), nose to shoulder (NTS), body length (BL), length of back leg (LBL), thigh length (THL), heart girth (HG) and thigh circumference (TC). The variance components used for estimation of heritability was obtained through VARCOMP procedure of SAS. Repeated records of dams were used to estimate repeatability. Estimates of heritability for growth traits were low - high for sire, dam and sire dam. The repeatability estimates for growth traits were from low to high. Low heritability traits can be improved upon by crossbreeding; moderately heritable traits however, can be improved by combining pedigree and individual selection. While individual selection can be adopted to improve highly heritable traits. The repetition of low repeatability trait in subsequent generation is no certainty; however, great reliability can be put upon selection of bucks and does with moderate to high repeatability traits.