Interbull Routine Genetic Evaluation for Dairy Production Traits
December 2013
Introduction
The latest international evaluation for dairy production traits took place
as scheduled at the Interbull Centre. Data from twenty seven (32) countries were
included in this evaluation.
International genetic evaluations for milk, fat and protein yields of bulls from
Australia, Austria-Germany, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark-Finland-Sweden, Estonia,
France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia,Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Republic of South Africa, Slovak Republic,
Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America ,Portugal,Korea,Argentina and Urugay
were computed. Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Holstein, Jersey, Red Dairy Cattle and Simmental breed data were included in this evaluation.
Changes in national procedures
Changes in the national genetic evaluation of production traits are as follows:
| ZAF | GUE | Large change in std parameters. Explanation =>Effect of genetic groups |
| CHE | BSW | For most of the trait groups, some bulls lost usually single herds and/or daughters and/or edc's compared to the last routine run, which may be due to recoding of |
| single animals (parentage) in our database | ||
| FRA | HOL BSW SIM MON RED | Few dropping in info due to decrease 1/1/3 herds/daughters/edc |
| DEU | HOL RDC JER | Small decreases (< 10%) in number of daughters, herds, EDC due to constant update of sire identities and systematic breed correction of cows / daughters |
| DFS | HOL JER RDC | Many drops in information across breeds and traits -> The changes are expected because of update of pedigree and renewed check of data |
| ZAF | HOL RDC | The animals identified that have changed from official to unofficial proof is simply a consequence of our data extraction routines whereby bulls with no daughters |
| do not get extracted for genetic evaluation after they reach a certain age. This year its the 2007-born sires. Herd decreases and daughter decreases arise due | ||
| to application of parentage verification testing affecting cows as well as replacement calves.Changes to correlations between previous and current, is expected | ||
| for the 2009-born since they are getting their first daughter proof this season, and this is the first Interbull run since the 2013-14 season started. | ||
| URY | HOL | Few drops in info: small changes in number of daughters (1-2) for most of them.The ones that drop the most were due to breed code update of some cows |
| CHE | HOL | EBVs from bulls with daughters in <10 hers are not sent anymore |
| NLD | BSW HOL JER RDC | EBVs from bulls with daughters in <10 hers are not sent anymore |
INTERBULL CHANGES COMPARED TO THE AUGUST ROUTINE RUN
Edit on inclusion of import bulls (type of proof = 21) has changed from this test run.
An import AI bull with official publication status 'Y' from a given country is included
if he has a first country proof included from a different country OR he has a second
country proof included from a different country with at least 150 daughters or 150 EDCs
in at least 50 herds for Holstein, 30 daughters or 30 EDCs in at least 10 herds for Guernsey,
and 80 daughters or 80 EDCs in at least 20 herds for Brown Swiss, Jersey, Red Dairy Cattle, Simmental.
Data and method of analysis
Data were national genetic evaluations of AI sampled bulls with at least 10 daughters or 10 EDC (for clinical mastitis and maternal calving traits at least
50 daughters or 50 EDC, and for direct calving traits at least 50 calvings or 50 EDC) in at
least 10 herds. Table 1 presents the amount of data included
in this Interbull evaluation for all breeds.
National proofs were first de-regressed within country and then analysed jointly with a linear model including the effects of evaluation country,
genetic group of bull and bull merit. Heritability estimates used in both the de-regression and international evaluation were as in each country's
national evaluation.
Table 2 presents the date of evaluation as supplied by each country
in the 01x-proof file.
Estimated genetic parameters and sire standard deviations are shown in APPENDIX I
and the corresponding number of common bulls are listed in APPENDIX
II.
Scientific literature
The international genetic evaluation procedure is based on international work described
in the following scientific publications:
International genetic evaluation computation:
Schaeffer. 1994. J. Dairy Sci. 77:2671-2678
Klei, 1998. Interbull Bulletin 17:3-7
Verification and Genetic trend validation:
Klei et al., 2002. Interbull Bulletin 29:178-182.
Boichard et al., 1995. J. Dairy Sci. 78:431-437
Weighting factors:
Fikse and Banos, 2001. J. Dairy Sci. 84:1759-1767
De-regression:
Sigurdsson and G. Banos. 1995. Acta Agric. Scand. 45:207-219
Jairath et al. 1998. J. Dairy Sci. Vol. 81:550-562
Genetic parameter estimation:
Klei and Weigel, 1998, Interbull Bulletin 17:8-14
Sullivan, 1999. Interbull Bulletin 22:146-148
Post-processing of estimated genetic correlations:
Mark et al., 2003, Interbull Bulletin 30:126-135
Jorjani et al., 2003. J. Dairy Sci. 86:677-679
https://wiki.interbull.org/public/rG%20procedure?action=print
Time edits
Weigel and Banos. 1997. J. Dairy Sci. 80:3425-3430
International reliability estimation
Harris and Johnson. 1998. Interbull Bulletin 17:31-36
Next routine international evaluation
The next routine evaluation of Interbull for production, conformation, udder health, longevity, calving, female fertility and workability traits is scheduled
for March 2014. Deadline for sending data to the Interbull Centre is Tuesday March 11, 2014, 17:00 CET; confidential distribution of results is targeted
for Thursday March 20, 2014, with earliest possible official release of results on April 1, 2014. Please remark the three week turn around time.
Next test international evaluation
The next test run for production, conformation, udder health, longevity, calving, female fertility and workability traits will take place in January
2014.
Countries planning to introduce changes in their national evaluation procedures and wishing to have them included in the routine Interbull evaluation, should
have their data examined in this test run. New data and validation results should be sent to the Interbull Centre no later than January 14, 2014, 17:00
CET.
PUBLICATION OF INTERBULL TEST RUN
Test evaluation results are meant for review purposes only and should not be published.