No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2017
Recently much research has been carried out to enhance piglet survival by genetic improvement. Heritabilities of traits associated with piglet survival are generally low, but the genetic variation is large enough to provide improvement through breeding (Knol et al., 2002). However, correlations between some traits and/or between maternal and direct genetic effects have shown contradictory results, and not many studies have considered these effects. Reports of correlations between piglet survival traits and production traits are even fewer. The aim of this study was to estimate heritabilities of piglet survival traits and their genetic associations with other reproduction traits as well as production traits, using a Bayesian approach and appropriate models and genetic statistical procedures in order to obtain more accurate genetic parameters.