Sire evaluation considering first lactation yield for improvement of life-time production in Sahiwal

Data on 324 Sahiwal cows, progeny of 23 sires maintained at Cattle Breeding farm of Nagpur Veterinary College (NVC) and Agricultural College (AC) farm , Nagpur, were used to evaluate sires for first-lactation yield (LMY1) and lifetime milk production (LTMY). Simple daughter average (D), least squares (LS) and best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) technique was used to esti mate sires breeding value. BLUP technique includes fixed effects of farm, p eriod and season of calving and random effect of sires within farm. Fixed e ffects in LS method and fixed and random effects in BLUP technique were use d to rank sires and to find out correlations among different methods of sir e valuation. The estimates of rank and product moment correlations revealed that correla tions of first lactation yield with lifetime production was high and signif icant (P < 0.01), but not perfect, indicating that all sires would not rank same for first lactation and lifetime production. However, 5 top sires alm ost had similar rank for both the traits. To improve lifetime productivity of dairy animals, evaluation of top ranked dairy sires for first lactation could be used as future sires. Daughter average method of sire evaluation c onsidering first lactation would improve lifetime productivity. D method wa s equally good when compared with LS and BLUP method of sire ranking.