Heritability of teat number and its relationship to production characters in male pigs

Abstract

Heritability of teat number and its correlation with the production characters, growth rate, feed conversion ratio and backfat depth, were examined. Data were obtained from 456 Large White, 1370 and race and 78 Synthetic boars submitted to the Queensland boar performance testing station.Teat number (mean � s.e.) of Large White boars was 14.44 � 0.05, significantly ( P < 0.05) more than either Landrace (14.27 � 0.03) or Synthetic boars (14.10 �0.12). The heritability estimate (� s.e.) for teat number of boars was 0.20 �0.08 obtained from L paternal half-sib analysis of 1519 boars from 198 sires. Phenotypic correlations between teat number and the production characters were all almost zero.