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Update on Current AIPL Research

This proposal aims to implement comprehensive dairy cattle evaluation procedures to include crossbreds, improve sire value assessment, and introduce innovative genetic analysis techniques to enhance breeding efficiency and productivity.

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Update on Current AIPL Research

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  1. Update on Current AIPL Research

  2. Senior research staff

  3. Proposal to include crossbreds • Include all breeds in a single evaluation • Report evaluations on individual breed bases • Could start in November 2006

  4. Reasons to include crossbreds • Indication of a bull’s value when used for a dam of different breed • Increased reliability of bull evaluation with addition of crossbred daughters • Producer expectations that crossbreds improve fertility and longevity

  5. Revised productive life • DIM > 305 credited • Differential weighting by DIM gives some advantage to cows that calve more often • Heritability reduced from 8.5 to 8% • Influence of fertility on productive life reduced • Female fertility is adequately reported in evaluations for daughter pregnancy rate • Implementation planned for August 2006 along with revised net merit index

  6. Productive life credits 140 120 100 80 Credit (%) 60 40 1 2 3 20 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 Years

  7. Productive life credits – 2006 140 120 100 80 Credit (%) 60 40 1 2 3 20 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 Years

  8. Evaluating male fertility • Calculation of ERCR to be transferred from DRMS to AIPL in May • Data from DRMS, AgSource, and Minnesota • Model and data sources same as for current ERCR • Continued research on possible improvements

  9. Evaluation for stillbirth • Stillbirth – born dead or died within 48 hours • Reported for about half of calving-ease records • AI organizations pay to support data collection and analysis of calving ease • Evaluation and reporting similar to calving ease • To be included in net merit index • Implementation planned for August 2006

  10. Abnormal distribution ofcalving-ease scores • Scored 1 (no problem) to 5 (extreme difficulty) • Most common score expected to be 1 • Bulls with large changes usually have abnormal distributions • Scores combined with 1 if score 2 or 3 most common • Additional herd-years excluded if distribution is unlikely

  11. Evaluation for milking speed • Brown Swiss provided milking-speed data scored 1 (slowest) to 8 (fastest) starting in 2004 • Heritability of 22% • Implementation planned for May 2006 • Some AI organizations may provide data for other breeds

  12. Low-cost parentage verification • New DNA test (SNP) may make parentage validation cheap enough to be widespread • Develop a database and adapt software to check parentage and suggest alternatives for invalid IDs • Determine rate of parentage errors in a sample of herds

  13. Health data • Add evaluations for more fitness traits • Evaluations for disease resistance could assist in prediction of productive life • Common codes for health events based on research data have been developed • Owners to retain control over access to and use of health data

  14. Summary • New traits • Stillbirth • Milking speed • Bull fertility (transferred from DRMS) • Changes to evaluations • All-breed evaluation • Variable credits by DIM for productive life • Investigation of use of DNA for parentage verification

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