5.2 Breeding strategies
It is important to keep in mind that whatever
strategy is considered, it will be successful only
if certain conditions are met. Meeting these
conditions does not guarantee success, but
neglecting them will certainly lead to failure.
The owners of the livestock should be involved
as much as possible, and preferably from the very
beginning of the programme. The social structure
of the region and the objectives of the producers
should be carefully taken into consideration.
The whole system, and not only one element of
it, needs to be considered. For example, when
considering a cross-breeding scheme in a remote area, it is necessary to ensure that the progeny of
cross-bred animals are viable in these conditions.
The programme should be as simple as possible.
In some cases it may be feasible to cross-breed
individual females to males from other breeds that
are available in the vicinity, but programmes that
require continuous use of males of more than one
breed are not feasible under low-input systems.
Breeding strategies
Determining the breeding objectives is the
most important and difficult task in any genetic
improvement programme, and there is even
less margin for error in low-input systems. The
questions that need to be considered under these
conditions include: what (if anything) should
be changed, and what would actually be an
improvement in these conditions?
A low-input system is also a low-output system,
but this does not necessarily mean low productivity.