Estimation of non-genetic and genetic effects for survival trait in Zandi sheep

This research was conducted with the aim of estimation of environmental factors affecting survival and estimate the genetic parameters survival from 1 to the last recording date in Zandi sheep. The survival records of 9558 Zandi sheep from 273 rams and 2328 ewes collected by Animal Breeding Center of Iran during the 25 years (1987 to 2011) were used in the analysis. The effective factors on survival and culling risk were estimated by Survival and cmprsk package. Estimation of variance components was performed by using of exponential distribution for censored dates by the fitting of model with additive genetic effect (model 1) and joint additive genetic and maternal permanent environmental of effects (model 2) under Bayesian approach and Gibbs sampling. A total of 1000000 samples with a burn-in of 100000 and a sampling interval of 75 were generated to estimate the posterior distribution of variance components. The results showed that year, month, birth weight, type birth, sex (P<0.001) and dam age (p<0.01) had significant effect on survival trait. the direct heritability of survival trait using models 1 and 2 was 0.184( 0.136-0.264) and 0.162( 0.120-0.202), respectively. the proportion of permanent variance to phenotypic variance was  0.046( 0.063- 0.031). According to the results of this study, genetic improvement of survival trait in zandi lamb is possible by genetic selection and the culling risk reduction is effective via management of environmental factors.