@conference {41866,
	title = {Development of a {\textquoteright}Wapiti Score{\textquoteright} visual assessment tool for determining introgression of Wapiti genes in young red deer},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	volume = {66},
	year = {2006},
	month = {Jan},
	pages = {55-58},
	publisher = {New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	organization = {New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	address = {Napier},
	abstract = {Red deer are the predominant farmed breed type in New Zealand, but crossbreeding red females with wapiti (or elk) males in a terminal sire system is common. Introgression of wapiti genes into the national red deer breeding hind herd has been shown to have a negative impact on the pregnancy rate of 16-18 month old hinds. We devised a four point visual scoring system ({\textquoteleft}Wapiti Score{\textquoteright}), based on wapiti phenotype characteristics, for application to weaner (6-10 month old) red deer, to allow rapid detection of wapiti introgression. This scoring system was trialled and refined using 449 rising-one-year-old red deer of mixed genotype and sex on a commercial breeding and finishing farm, during three pelage phases. For a subset of 186 animals {\textquoteleft}Wapiti Score{\textquoteright} was compared to the DNA based GenomnzTM GenometerTM G3 Hybrid Test {\textquoteleft}Estimated Elk{\textquoteright} (EstElk), where EstElk; is the estimated proportion of wapiti (elk) genes in an individual animal predicted by the GenometerTM. A significant positive correlation (P < 0.05) was found between EstElk and {\textquoteleft}Wapiti Score{\textquoteright} for two independent observers, with an increase of one point in {\textquoteleft}Wapiti Score{\textquoteright} corresponding to an increase of approximately 0.10 in EstElk. The strongest correlation between Wapiti Score and EstElk were from the winter and spring scores. The effectiveness of Wapiti Score as a tool for classifying young deer by breed-type (red deer or wapiti ) was assessed using 0.2 EstElk as the breed-type threshold and comparing that against different selection Wapiti Scores (1-3). },
	issn = {1176-5283},
	author = {Ward JF and Scott IC and Asher GW and Littlejohn RP}
}
