Environmental factors affecting racing time of trotter horses in Serbia

Abstract

© 2015, Faculty of Agriculture in Osijek. All rights reserved. Speed, the most important trait in trotter horses, forms the basis for examining their racing ability, and is calculated according to the time it takes to run a certain distance. The phenotypic manifestation of a horse’s speed is controlled by numerous genes and larger or smaller impacts of environmental factors. To improve trotter horse selection to be more successful and faster in genetic progress it is very important to determine the impacts of such gene-related and environmental factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of year and month of birth, sex, year and season of race, age, racetrack, distance and type of start on trotter horse racing times. Data from the Association for Trotting Sport of Serbia (UKSS) for the registered horses and races in the period from 1998 to 2010 were used. The database is comprised of data for 1263 horses over a total of 14398 races. After calculating descriptive statistics of racing times, the effect of fixed factors using the general linear model (GLM) was examined. The average racing time achieved was 84.21s, and ranged from 73.8 to 132.2s. All of the tested factors had a statistically significant effect on the observed racing times. Thus, each of these factors should be included in future models for genetic prediction of the suitability of animals use as parents of further generations of racing trotters. This should increase the rate of genetic progress and competitiveness of the animals at both national and international levels.