Date of Award

2021

Publisher

North Dakota State University

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Awarded

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program

Animal Sciences

Department

Animal Sciences

College

Agriculture, Food Systems and Natural Resources

Faculty Advisor

Hanna, Lauren

Description

Beef cattle temperament is not only important to handler safety and animal welfare but also found to be related to productivity and thereby, considered an economically important trait. Constraints to improve cattle temperament are due to the inherent complexity of this trait and difficulty in measurement. Our findings suggest that traditional subjective methods (DS; docility score and TS; temperament score) of beef cattle temperament evaluation has less effect in genetic merit predictions (heritability estimates and estimated breeding value ranking) provided that evaluator is included in the model. Our novel movement-based objective method (four-platform standing scale, FPSS) using standard deviation of FPSS data (SSD) and coefficient of variation of SSD (CVSSD) can be use in place of DS and TS, but more appropriately with TS which had higher association based on genetic correlation analysis. Calf temperament had significant effect on adjusted birth weight (ABW), adjusted 205 weaning weight (205-d WW), weaning average daily gain (ADG), and weight gain (WG) where there is an increased ABW, 205-d WW, ADG, and WG with calmer temperament calves. Based on genetic correlation, ABW, 205-d WW, ADG, and WG may not be associated with calf temperament due to low correlations to majority of our models. Lastly, we found significant association between dam temperament and calf 205-d WW, ADG, and WG where dam with calmer temperament had increased calf 205-d WW, ADG, and WG.

Rights

NDSU policy 190.6.2

Rights Link

https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf

Handle Identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/10365/33588

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