Marine livestock

Your direct
source
for
marine
livestock

 

if you're looking for quality live rock,
corals, mushrooms, polyps and
other marine livestock ... we can help!

We hope you enjoy your visit ...
there are lots of live rock and
coral photos within our site
for your viewing pleasure!

Our mission is primarily to enlighten and inform. Whether we do business or not, we'd like you to bookmark our page for the non-sales content. We will produce a series of articles, covering many aspects of the aquarium hobby from how the industry works to marine mammals in the oceans.   We also intend on having one of the most complete listings of where many fish, corals, and invertebrates are from.   We also hope to build an equally thorough collection of photos for coral identification. In other words, a resource center everyone can learn from.

Achieving production targets within a breeding enterprise is assisted by developing a breeding program that utilises genetic and reproduction knowledge and technologies.

The productive potential of an animal is defined by its genetic makeup which then interacts with environmental factors, such as nutrition, to determine the extent to which the potential is realised.

Using the best available genetics allows producers to potentially improve the animal's contribution to enterprise profit, and reproductive management aims to ensure that the desirable genes that have been selected are transferred from one generation to the next.

Breeding objectives and selection

An enterprise's breeding program beings by defining a breeding objective. A breeding objective describes the 'ideal' animal a producer aims to breed and is influenced by market requirements which are reflected in market specifications.

Once a producer has developed a breeding objective that reflects market requirements, livestock that demonstrate traits that suit the breeding objective can be selected.

Visual and genetic assessment

Selection should consider both subjectively measured traits, such as those measured through visual assessment, and objectively measured traits, such as those identified through measurement or genetic assessment.

The difficult task of selecting breeding stock based on genetic assessment is made easier and more precise through estimated breeding values (EBVs) for cattle and goats and Australian sheep breeding values (ASBVs) for sheep.