Abstract #120

# 120
Currently available genetic resources in the United States for dairy sheep and dairy goat production.
D. Thomas*1, J.-M. Astruc2, A. Carta3, M. D. Pérez-Guzmán4, J.-M. Serradilla5, 1University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 2Institut de l’Élevage, Castanet-Tolosan, France, 3DIRPA-AGRIS, Olmedo, Sardegna, Italy, 4Instituto Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario y Forestal, Valdepeñas, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, 5Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain.

Industries using specialized dairy breeds of sheep and goats for commercial milk production are well established in Europe and the Middle East but much more recent in North America. Dairy goats were first imported into North America in the early 1900s, but the commercial industry is only about 40 years old. The dairy sheep industry in North America is younger with the first importation of dairy sheep breeds in the early 1990s. Dairy goat breeds of the greatest importance in North America are the breeds of Alpine, LaMancha, Nubian, Saanen, and Toggenburg. Production of genetic evaluations for dairy goats in the US is a cooperative effort by the American Dairy Goat Association, regional dairy records processing centers, and the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding. There were 589 herds with 17,381 does in this milk-recording program in 2016. Canadian dairy goat genetic evaluations are produced by goatgenetics.ca through cooperation of the Canadian Goat Society, Canadian Livestock Records Corporation (CLRC), Canadian DHI, and Holstein Canada. The primary dairy sheep breeds for commercial production in North America are East Friesian and Lacaune with smaller numbers of British Milk Sheep and Awassi. In Canada, genetic evaluations for dairy sheep have started through GenOvis in cooperation with CLRC. There are no organizations in the US for maintaining pedigree records or calculation of genetic evaluations for dairy sheep. Several successful programs for dairy small ruminants are in operation in Europe for genetic improvement of both production and functional traits (e.g., sheep: French Lacaune and Manech, Spanish Manchega and Latxa, and Italian Sarda; and goats: Spanish Murciano-Granadina, Malagueña, Florida, and Payoya and French Alpine and Saanen). Some of these programs use genomic data as well as traditional pedigree and performance information. These European programs can serve as a source of imported genetics to improve the production efficiency of North American dairy small ruminants and also as examples of the types of improvement programs that could be implemented in North America for continual improvement of local populations of dairy small ruminants.

Key Words: dairy sheep, dairy goat, breed

Speaker Bio
David Thomas is an Emeritus Professor of Sheep Management and Genetics, Department of Animal Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He retired in 2017 after over 39 years on faculties of animal science at Oregon State University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He supervised the only dairy sheep research program in North America at Wisconsin.