LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION THEME 2.0: LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION IMPROVEMENT OF LIVESTOCK BREEDS Introduction: The goal for keeping animals is to produce animal products which are sufficient and qualities enough. So as to achieve, this livestock keepers, must have good quality animals, feeding them well and keep them healthy. Livestock Improvement The productivity of farm animals is set by INHERITANCE i.e. passing of genes from parents to off springs however the environment determines how much the inheritance potential is going to be reached. So livestock improvement is therefore the program that set out to improve the inheritance of the environment in which they are kept. Concept of inheritance Inheritance deals with the mechanism by which characteristics of parents are passed to the off springs. The mechanism of inheritance resides in the sex cells (gametes) in both males and females which contain CHROMOSOMES carrying units of inheritance called genes. Chromosomes occur in pairs in the nucleus the number of chromosomes e.g. Cattle -30, Sheep -27, Pig -19, Chicken -39 The members of each pair are called HOMOLOGOUS CHROMOSOMES. Genes are located in specific units of chromosomes called Locus. The genes located at the some loci of chromosomes pair are alleles. If they have the same effect are called homozygous. If they have different effects (antagonistic) are called heterozygous. Sex cells undergo cell division whereby the cell divides to form daughter cells with half number of chromosomes from parent cells.