We evaluated the use daily feed intake data that is routinely collected on purebred male selection candidates in high-health nucleus herds to derive indicator traits to select them in order to improve disease resilience of their crossbred progeny in commercial environments. For the latter, we used data from a large-scale natural disease challenge of crossbred Landrace x Yorkshire barrows. Although the derived purebred indicator traits had some level of heritability, estimates of their genetic correlations with disease resilience of their crossbreds were highly variable. However, results did suggest that resilience measures derived from feed intake and feeding behavior traits of purebreds in high-health nucleus herds may contain information that is genetically correlated to disease resilience in the field. Additional research is needed to identify such measures.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.