Risk-rated economic values for traits of meat sheep in smallholder production system in the tropics

Abstract

This paper reports the effect of incorporating risk in the derivation of economic values (EVs) for traits of meat sheep in medium to high production potential areas of the tropics. A model previously used to derive EVs without considering risk (traditional EVs; TEVs) was revised to incorporate variances of profit and risk attitudes of livestock producers in estimation of risk-rated EVs (REVs). The REVs obtained were 12.84, 9.93, 0.16, 0.14, 0.19, 0.93, 0.07, 0.42 and 0.00 for litter size (LS), lambing frequency (LF), pre- and post-weaning lamb survival to 12 months (PRWS and PWS, respectively), ewe survival (ES), yearling weight (12mLW), consumable meat (CM), kg of manure DM sold per ewe per year (MS) and residual DM feed intake (RFI). In all cases, EVs differed based on whether risk and farmers’ risk attitude was incorporated in the profit model.