ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT IN THE AREA OF BREEDING AND SELECTION OF DAIRY CATTLE
The main goal of the dairy cattle breeding is not only to achieve high milk production, but also to improve livestock constantly in order to enhance genetic potential of the animals' productive qualities and to accelerate genetic progress in a separate herd as well as in the breed in general. To achieve these goals it is necessary to select parents for a future generation of animals properly, to develop an effective program of pair selection taking into account parents' breeding values ​​ according to productiveness and breeding qualities and calculating the Breeding Value Index of the pedigree of a proband with the inbreeding level control. While selecting stud bulls it is important to take into consideration not only the main selection traits but also the proportion of blood of related breeds, the evaluation of the profitability of first-calf heifers and the fetal development rate of their daughters. The article contains the list of the results of scientific research aiming at solving these issues that have been conducted by employees of the Laboratory of Genetics and Breeding of Ayrshire Cattle and the Breeding Center (Association) on Ayrshire Breed of the Federal State Scientific Institution “All-Russia Research and Development Institute of Farm Animal Genetics and Breeding” over the last five years. These are new methodologies, algorithms and computer programs developed during performance of R&D tasks and development of the Programs on enhancing genetic potential of productivity of breeding herds animals in the different regions of the Russian Federation.