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Breeding amiable animals? Improving farm animal welfare by including social effects in breeding programmes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

TB Rodenburg ,
P Bijma ,
ED Ellen ,
R Bergsma ,
S de Vries ,
JE Bolhuis ,
B Kemp  and
JAM van Arendonk
TB Rodenburg*
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
P Bijma
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
ED Ellen
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
R Bergsma
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands Institute for Pig Genetics, PO Box 43, 6640 AA, Beuningen, The Netherlands
S de Vries
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
JE Bolhuis
Affiliation:
Adaptation Physiology Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
B Kemp
Affiliation:
Adaptation Physiology Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
JAM van Arendonk
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
*
* Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints: bas.rodenburg@wur.nl
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Abstract

Social interactions between individuals, such as co-operation and competition, are key factors in evolution by natural selection. As a consequence, evolutionary biologists have developed extensive theories to understand the consequences of social interactions for response to natural selection. Current genetic improvement programmes in animal husbandry, in contrast, largely ignore the implications of social interactions for the design of breeding programmes. Recently, we have developed theoretical and empirical tools to quantify the magnitude of heritable social effects, ie the heritable effects that animals have on their group mates’ traits, in livestock populations, and to utilise those effects in genetic improvement programmes. Results in commercial populations of pigs and laying hens indicate large heritable social effects, and the potential to substantially increase responses to selection in traits affected by social interactions. In pigs, including social effects into the breeding programme affected aggressive behaviour, both at mixing and in stable groups, indicating changes in the way dominance relationships are established and in aggressiveness. In laying hens, we applied selection between kin-groups to reduce mortality due to cannibalistic pecking. This resulted in a considerable difference in mortality between the low mortality line and the unselected control line in the first generation (20 vs 30%). Furthermore, changes in behavioural and neurobiological responses to stress were detected in the low mortality line, pointing to reduced fearfulness and stress sensitivity. These first results indicate that including social effects into breeding programmes is a promising way to reduce negative social interactions in farm animals, and possibly to also increase positive social interactions, by breeding animals with better social skills.

Keywords

animal welfaregenetic selectiongroup selectionlaying henspigssocial behaviour
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 19 , Issue S1: Proceedings of the UFAW International Symposium ‘Darwinian selection, selective breeding and the welfare of animals’ Bristol, 2009 , May 2010 , pp. 77 - 82
Copyright
© 2010 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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