PROGENY TESTING - ITS RELEVANCE TO VETERINARY INSEMINATION AND CONSULTANCY PRACTICE

Evidence is provided to the effect that veterinary insemination is no purpose in itself but may be developed to become a heartpiece of preventive veterinary medicine in the context of veterinary insemination and consultation. Pursued on the basis of adequate contracts with farms and insemination units, it may turn out as an ideal method by which to ensure good health and improved performance of livestock herds of various sizes. Progeny quality testing, in addition to fertility monitoring of parents, has proved to play a key role in livestock management. A variant of a livestock management programme which covers parameters of adaptive fitness, in addition to reproductive fitness, as well as individual suitability for specific breeding programmes has been devised on the basis of a fitness model. Reference is made in that programme to insemination practice as well as to diagnostic and therapeutic activities. The category of congenital extremity deformities of calves is used as an example by which to underline the indispensability of competent veterinary diagnostics. In another chapter, reference is made to implications of artificial insemination for veterinary genetics and genetic epidemiology. Possible and necessary improvement of genetic methods, interpopulation control systems, higher accuracy of parametrical determinations through availability of larger test groups as well as the complex of pathological vectors that can be influenced by artificial insemination are some of the points discussed. The examples quoted in this paper are relating to field tests for heterozygosity and for mechanisms of recombination genetics as well as to immigration of defect genes.