Reproductive Value for Breeders

In ecology, there is a measure called the reproductive value of an organism. This measure is for quantifying the potential of an individual organism to affect the population through reproducing offspring throughout its lifetime. The reproductive value of an organism depends on its fertility as well as on its longevity which consequently relies on its ability to survive.

It would be interesting to use the measure of reproductive value of individual organisms when breeding horses, dogs or cattle. This would help the breeder to estimate the reproductive value of each of his animals.