An open letter from Carrie Welsh at USDA:

I work for the USDA’s National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP), which is developing a collection of frozen semen and embryos from all livestock species in order to provide livestock industries with a strategic backup of genetic resources that can be used in the event of a major disease outbreak, the formation of new strains of livestock, or performing research on particular genetic strains (for example, studying resistance to internal parasites).  With goats, this is particularly difficult due to a lack of commercial companies collecting and freezing semen and embryos.

We have been asked by another USDA facility to provide blood samples from US goat breeds which they will use to determine if a newly found 171R mutation exists in the US population.  The original mutation was found in a Greek breed.  In addition, the lab is going to run a microsatellite panel allowing us to do a genetic distancing study to determine the genetic diversity of the US goat breeds.

This is where we need help.  Our goat collection is lacking sufficient numbers for many breeds and we are asking for your help by collecting blood samples from some of your purebred goats.  In sampling a breed, we would like five unrelated, purebred, registered animals per breeder (preferably 2 bucks and 3 does) and have breeders that are located across the U.S.  We would like a minimal set of information on any goat collected.  The information we would request includes: breeder, animal registration number, sire and dam registration number, gender, animal birth date, and herd size.  We will want to publish the information derived from this work but such a publication will not include information about breeders or how their individual animals/herds tested.  Breeders should also know that the information we will be deriving from their sampled animals will not be at a level of detail suitable for use in determining parentage.

We cannot pay for the blood collections, but will provide the collection materials and shipping.  If you would be interested in collecting blood for us, please let me know your address and when I should send the materials for the collection.  The material has to be received here by July 9.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. 

Thank you,

Carrie Welsh

Carrie S. Welsh
National Animal Germplasm Program
USDA-ARS-NCGRP
1111 South Mason Street
Fort Collins, CO  80521
Phone: 970.495.3237

http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=54020500           

For additional information about the program see USDA Animal Collections and NAGP.

Related Posts

1. Sperm bank safeguards Angora future
2. USDA Looking for Nominees
3. Feds scrap NAIS
4. Goat Program Draws Criticism
5. Organic Defined

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 7:32 am and is filed under Featured Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.