SIRE EVALUATION BASED ON FIRST LACTATION 305 DAY AND TEST DAY RECORDS IN MURRAH BUFFALOES

Data pertaining to progeny of 46 sires calved during 1987 to 2006 maintained at the Buffalo Research Centre (BRC), Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar were considered for the present study. The sire effects and ranks of the 46 sires were estimated on the basis of their daughters' performance. The progeny group size of the sires ranged from 3 to 16. The sires were evaluated for first lactation 305 day milk yield (MY305), and ten first lactation test day (TD) milk records. Best linear unbiased procedure (BLUP) was used to estimate the breeding values of sires. The estimated breeding values (EBV) for MY305 and test day milk records ranged from -284.18 to 276.42; -0.82 to 0.65; -0.87 to 0.97; -1.25 to 0.88; -0.78 to 1.15; -1.24 to 1.13; -0.82 to 0.73; -0.79 to 1.08; -0.91 to 1.18; -0.66 to 1.16 and -0.98 to 0.73 kg for TD1, TD2, TD3, TD4, TD5, TD6, TD7, TD8, TD9, and TD10, respectively. The product moment correlations were low to high and the highest (0.71) product moment correlation was obtained between MY305 and TD6. The highest rank correlations (0.91) were obtained between TD1 and TD10. The results indicated that sire coding 33, 06 and 49 were good and can be used for future breeding purpose.