Breeding Strategies for Genetic Improvement of Dairy Cattle: Breeding Strategies for Dairy Cattle Improvement

Dairy production has been recognised as a strategy to wealth creation and overcoming the worsening problems of poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, and hunger among the resource-poor households in developing countries. Although the demand for dairy products is ever increasing, improving the production efficiency of dairy cattle to satisfy the demand is the biggest challenge faced by developing countries. In Kenya for instance, different breeding strategies have been employed to improve the productivity of dairy cattle. However, the choice of these strategies has often been done without due regard to their genetic and economic efficiency. This study therefore examined the genetic and economic efficiency of breeding strategies involving utilization of local and imported genetic materials to improve dairy cattle productivity in Kenya using a deterministic approach. Such evaluations are inevitable when an efficient and sustainable improvement breeding programme is to be developed. This book is therefore, developed to provide information on genetic and economic merits of different breeding strategies in relation to their adoption for genetic improvement of dairy cattle in Kenya.