Management of genetic diseases

In bovine populations in which the number of male sires is always lower than the number of females, male eradication can be the preferred option, depending on the frequency of the diseas in the population. It is therefore advisable to select only males that are not carriers as breeding stock for the next generation. Since the choice is made early on, the cost is relatively low. Since the sires chosen are not carriers, no homozygous animal is born, independently of its mother's genotype, so no new case is observed. At each generation, the frequency of the mutated allele is divided by two.

Total eradication takes several generations and requires an effort over time, but its cost is low. This option is largely preferable to an elimination over one generation, which requires gentyping a very large number of descendants and eliminating many, at an exorbitant cost.

In this section, you can find detailed articles on the following subjects:

• All populations have genetic diseases
• Specificities of animal breeds in livestock
• Recessive determinism
• Homozygous mapping when recessive determinism is detected
• Dominant determinism
• Genetic tests
• The benefits of genotyping chips
• The more complex cases where there are no obvious candidate genes
• The procedures for managing a disease depending on circumstances
• A past example of eradication
• A focus on management of diseases by our Belgian neighbors with the Blanc Bleue Belge breed