The White Galloway Stars-Project
The basic rules of inheritance lead to the principle that matings of animals with the desired colour and marking have the highest chances of producing the desired offspring. However, this strategy is not always successful.
Why is this so?
And how should we deal with animals that bear the perfect colour and marking but have parents that do not show the desired phenotype?
Mechthild Bening has posed this question to herself often during the some 20 years that she has been breeding White Galloways. Her extensive documentation as well as that of those breeders participating in the Project have provided a vast amount of material for the research work being carried out by Professor Hermann Swalve of the MLU in Halle, Germany, and Professor Bertram Brenig of the Georg-August-University's Veterinary Institute in Göttingen, Germany which it is hoped will finally shed light in the darkness surrounding the inheritance of coat colour among Galloways.
The project already has started
Data recording sheets have been developed which resemble an herd book registration sheet. Data to be recorded relates to the pedigree of an animal and to the coat colour and marking. Taken together, this data is the basis of the scientific investigations for the project White Galloway Stars.
Up to now, around 250 records on sires and dams that have been used in breeding herds along with around 660 records on their offspring have been collected. It is important not to leave out any information.
After each calving year, the data has been collected and transferred to the University of Halle where it is taken into a data base and already has partly been analysed.
Are you a breeder? Then, please participate and provide data!
Important Information
About the Project
Contact
Phone:
+49 (0) 345 55 22320
Email: hermann.swalve
@landw.uni-halle.de
