Dynamics of productive qualities of rabbits when creating a new breeding group

Abstract

Many branches of animal husbandry in our country are in need of domestic highly productive breeds and types of animals. Along with other problems – the lack of domestic developments in the field of animal housing and feeding systems that ensure high production efficiency, the lack of high-quality breeding resources is the most important factor hindering the development of the population’s own food production. Technologies and breeding resources of animals borrowed from other countries lead to short-term effects of the development of livestock industries. Rabbit breeding is no exception – the branch of animal husbandry that allows you to get dietary meat at a fast pace. Since the 1940s of the XX century, NIIPZK has been providing scientific support for the formation and development of the rabbit breeding industry. In particular, the scientists of the institute carried out work on breeding. With the participation of the Institute’s employees, the Soviet Chinchilla rabbit breed was created and the White Giant breed was significantly improved. To increase the efficiency of rabbit breeding, different two- and three-breed crosses were tested. Since the 1970s of the last century, no work has been carried out to create new crosses of meat-skin and meat breeds of rabbits. The last rabbit breed approved by the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia (2014) was a decorative breed-the Russian dwarf Angora. Currently, rabbit breeding uses breeding resources imported from abroad, which makes the farms dependent and leads to serious financial costs. Therefore, the actual directions in the selection of domestic rabbit breeding are the creation of new domestic highly productive breeds, types, and crosses. The article presents the results of the creation of a breeding group of rabbits to obtain a new breed. The breeding group was created using at the first stage animals of the parental form of the three-breed cross of Spring rabbits, conducting further breeding "in itself" and selecting from the offspring from the best pairs of individuals that meet the target criteria.