Discuss the various techniques adopted in cattle breeding.

Explanation

Methods of Animal breeding: There are two methods of animals breeding, namely inbreeding and out breeding.
(i) Inbreeding: Breeding between animals of the same breed for 4.6 generations is called inbreeding. Inbreeding increases homozygosity and exposes the harmful recessive genes. Continuous inbreeding reduces fertility and even productivity, resulting in ..inbreeding depression... This can be avoided by breeding selected animals of the breeding population and they should be mated with superior animals of the same breed but unrelated to the breeding population. It helps to restore fertility and yield.
(ii) Outbreeding: The breeding between unrelated animals is called outbreeding. Individulas produced do not have common ancestors for 4.6 generations. Outbreeding helps to produce new and favourable traits, to produce hybrids with superior qualities and helps to create new breeds. New and favourable genes can be introduced into a population through outbreeding.
(iii) Out crossing: It is the breeding between unrelated animals of the same breed but having no common ancestry. The offspring of such a cross is called outcross. This method is suitable for breeding animals below average in productivity.
(iv) Cross breeding: Breeding between a superior male of one breed with a superior female of another breed. The cross bred progeny has superior traits (hybrid vigour or heterosis).
(v) Interspecific hybridization: In this method of breeding mating is between male and female of two different species. The progeny obtained from such crosses are different from their parents, and may possess the desirable traits of the parents. Have you heard about Mule? It was produced by the process of interspecific hybridization between a male donkey and a female horse.