Preservation breeding

Breeding Better Livestock

"In beginning the concluding section of this book, let's remind ourselves once more that neither selection nor systems of breeding can create new genes. The can, if properly applied, create new and better animals, but they do it by putting the old genes into new patterns or combinations - not by creating new genes.

THE MONGOLIAN BANKHAR PROJECT

Sometimes, the traditional ways of doing things really are better.

In the stark landscape of Mongolia, nomadic herders have migrated with their livestock to follow the forage for thousands of years.

During the Soviet occupation of Mongolia, most of the livestock guarding dogs were shot or released. Without the dogs, herdsmen resorted to shooting the predators - wolves and the endangered snow leopard.

A call for preservation breeding

By Carol Beuchat PhD
In the last two decades, there has been increased awareness of the value of domestic animal breeds as genetic resources that need to be managed and preserved to ensure their longterm survival and usefulness. The concern for this began when livestock breeding started being done on an industrial scale using modern technologies like embryo transfer and genomic selection.