Abstract: | Cutting scores for 3399 horses representing 327 different sires from the NCHA World Championship Futurities of 1975 through 1983 were used to calculate heritability and yearly change in scores. The analysis yielded a heritability estimate of 19%±5%. Appropriate selection schemes, then, should be successful in bringing about an improvement in cutting score. The analysis of yearly trend, however, indicates that average cutting scores at NCHA futurities are decreasing by 0.78 points per year. |