By Saintly Ngwenya
In animal breeding, culling is the process of removing or segregating animals from a breeding stock based on specific traits. To put it simply, it is the removal of certain members of the stock from the rest of the flock. There are several factors which have to be considered before culling stock. Here are some of the factors:
- Poorly performing animals – these have to be removed since they will be consuming more resources than the income they are bringing to the enterprise.
- Aged animals – they have to be removed to give room for younger stock to perform. Older stocks are usually susceptible to diseases thereby making their maintenance costly.
- Sick, injured or physically deformed animals have to be removed from the rest of the herd as they require more time and attention.
- Off type or poor breeds are also strong candidates for culling as they tend to distort the overall quality of the herd.
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One thought on “Factors to consider when culling stock”
Even the best performing animal can fall sick sonetimes, and a farmer can not cull it for that. It is the sickly animal, that keeps getting sick, that should be culled. It still needs to treated first until it recovers before it is actually sold or slaughtered.