Question

What are the methods of animal breeding? Which method is more advantageous and why?

Answer 1

Animal breeding:

1. Animal breeding is the process of selective mating of animals with desirable genetic traits, to maintain or enhance these traits in future generations.
2. For livestock, this involves estimation of the genetic value of individuals for traits including growth rate and yield of products such as eggs, milk, or meat.

Methods of animal breeding:

1. Natural breeding: In natural breeding, the indigenous breed of cow mates with the bull of high milk yielding exotic breeds. This is the traditional method of breeding and mating is done during the high fertility period of cows.
2. Artificial insemination: Introduction of semen into the genital tract of females by artificial means is known as artificial insemination. It has proved to be a boon to animal breeders. At present more than 50% of cows are artificially inseminated by semen collected from high-quality bulls.

Artificial insemination is advantageous over natural breeding because of the following reasons:

1. It allows selective breeding of animals having desired characteristics.
2. This method of breeding is easier and cheaper.
3. It is an economic method as semen from a single bull can be used to impregnate about 3000 cows.
4. it brings about genetic improvement of breeding.