C ROSSBREEDING involves the mating of two or more breeds. In most species of domestic livestock, crossbreeding has some desirable consequences, especially in the production of market stock. These consequences are the production of heterosis, the opportunity to incorporate desirable genetic material quickly, and the chance to combine several desirable traits into a market animal. The consequence...

data on 361 lambs of mehraban (n=90), ghezel (n=92), ghezel × mehraban (n=87), and mehraban × ghezel (n=92, sire breed listed first) were used to estimate individual heterosisfor lamb growth. the obtained results demonstrated that lambs of purebreds of ghezel and mehraban showed the highest and the lowest birth weight, respectively (p

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the effect of crossbreeding between ghezel and mehraban on growth performance and carcass characteristics was studied for two consecutive years using 162 purebred and crossbred lambs. the four groups of lambs involved in the study were purebred mehraban (mm), purebred ghezel (gg), crossbred ghezel ram×mehraban ewe (gm) and crossbred mehraban ram×ghezel ewe (mg). the lambs were fed with grazing ...

Heterosis Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, refers to the increased vitality or “doing ability” of the crossbreds as compared to the average of the parental breeds. The only way to get heterosis is through crossbreeding. Heterosis is expressed by the crossbred lamb (individual) and by the crossbred ewe (maternal). Crossbred lambs, on the average, are more vigorous and have a higher survivability than...

Crossbreeding programmes in pigs exploit between breed complementarity of additive genetic effects and heterosis generated by non-additive genetic effects. Within breed, improvement programmes may focus on additive effects and hence the enhancement of complementarity, but non-additive variation is not generally used in within line selection or for mate selection at the multiplier or commercial ...

An increasing number of commercial beef producers direct themselves to crossbreeding systems in which crossbred animals have higher merit in reproduction, growth and end product. It has been claimed that heterosis in a sound crossbreeding program could increase the productivity in the beef cow herd by as much as 26% over a comparable straight breeding program. The availability of diverse beef c...