Page 171 - Agriculture_Form_Three

Agriculture for Secondary Schools

(f) Temperament: Select an animal with good temperament, e.g., docility is desired
for draught animals.

(g) Prolificacy: Select animals with an ability to produce large litter size.

(h) Adaptability: Select animals with an ability to fit or cope with the prevailing
environment.

(i) Fertility: Select animals which are fertile and have ability to breed regularly.
(j) Mothering ability: Selected animals should have ability to rear their young ones
successfully to weaning age.

Breeding systems

After selection of the animals to be used as a breeding stock, further breeding systems
are employed to maintain or improve the merits of the offspring to be born. Breeding
involves choosing animals with good qualities to mate one another. There are two

major categories of breeding systems. The first category is breeding or mating of
related animals while the second category is breeding or mating of unrelated animals.

Mating of related animals: This is also termed as inbreeding and it is further divided
into close breeding and line breeding.

Close breeding: This is mating of more closely related animals like mating sire to
daughter, dam to her son or full brother to full sister, uncle to niece, nephew to aunt

or cousin.

Line breeding: This is mating of animals that are more distantly related but can be
traced back to one common ancestor. For example, cousin’s grandparents to grand
offspring and half-brother to half-sister.

In selecting related animals to mate, it is important to understand its advantages and
disadvantages.

Advantages of mating related animals

(a) It increases uniformity among offsprings.
(b) It is useful when we want to produce a more uniform line in any animal species
with many desirable qualities.

(c) Unwanted genes may be discovered and eliminated by further testing in the
line.

Student’s Book Form Three
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