The goal of the breeding work is to select the best animals for breeding. The best animals are the animals, which are genetically superior to the others with respect to the traits that are being selected for. But how are these animals selected?
A precondition for selecting the best animals is to know which ones are the best. The animals will also be ranged in relation to one another on the basis of their genetic superiority. The best way to measure an animal’s genetic superiority is to look at its breeding value. Or, in other words, the breeding value tells us how much an animal is worth as breeding animal. Thus the breeding value estimation plays a central role in the breeding work. Selection is meaningless if there is no information on the breeding values.
A breeding value estimation can have a larger or smaller degree of accuracy, but it is important to keep in mind, that the breeding value estimation is the best way of making assumptions about an animal’s true breeding value. Statistical errors always occur on the breeding value estimation of an animal. The larger the standard error, the smaller the response obtained from a given selection, since the ranging error of the animal is increased. This is very abstract, but the following examples should make this easier to understand.
