The Heritability of Some Economic Characteristics of Beef Cattle

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Abstract
The present study is a summary of the data collected during ten years (1942–1951) of Record of Performance testing at the U. S. Range Livestock Experiment Station at Miles City, Montana. The data consist of records of 635 steers from grade cows mated to 88 sires from nine-lines. The characteristics studied were: birth weight, weaning weight, final weight at the completion of the feedlot period, gain in the feedlot, efficiency of feed utilization, shrinkage in shipment, slaughter grade, dressing percentage, carcass grade, color of eye muscle, area of eye muscle, and thickness of fat. Intra-year and -line heritabilities were computed by the method of paternal half-sib correlation. The effects of differences between years, between lines within years, and between sires within lines were separated by the analysis of variance, and their relative magnitude was estimated, while the effects of age at weaning, and age and final weight at the completion of the feedlot period were removed by covariance. The following results were obtained: Copyright © . .