H. Farhangfar, H. Naeemipour Younesi,
Volume 11, Issue 1 (4-2007)
Abstract
A total of 25,471 Iranian Holstein heifers distributed in 523 herds of 20 provinces were used to estimate heritability, genetic and phenotypic associations between a number of traits related to the production and reproduction performance. The Animal Breeding Centre of Iran collected the records studied in this research between 1991 and 2001. The traits associated with production were 305-day, 2x adjusted milk, fat yields and fat percentage and the traits associated with reproduction were age at first calving, number of services per conception, gestation period, calving interval as well as dry days as a separate trait. The heritability estimates were 0.31, 0.23, 0.31, 0.14, 0.03, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.01 for 305-day, 2x milk, fat yields, fat percentage, age at first calving, dry days, calving interval, gestation period and the number of services per conception, respectively. Milk yield was genetically correlated with age at the first calving (-0.14), dry days
(-0.31), calving interval (0.54), gestation period (0.01) and the number of insemination per conception (0.38). Fat yield had negative genetic correlations with age at first calving (-0.16), dry days (-0.23) while it was positively correlated with calving interval (0.44), gestation period (0.11) and the number of insemination per conception (0.20). Age at the first calving, dry days and gestation period had a positive genetic correlation with fat percenateg (0.03, 0.15 and 0.09 respectively) while calving interval and the number of insemination per conception were negatively correlated with fat percentage (-0.21 and -0.25 respectively).
H. Farhangfar, H. Rezaee,
Volume 11, Issue 40 (7-2007)
Abstract
A total of 179,460 monthly test-day milk records (thrice a day milking) obtained from 17,946 Iranian Holstein heifers distributed in 287 herds and calved from 1986 to 2001 were used to predict breeding value of animals. Monthly test-day milk production was analysed by applying a covariance function in which the effects of herd-year-season of production (HYSOP), age at test day (covariate), additive genetic and permanent environmental effects were included. Orthogonal legendre polynomials up to order 5 (quartic) were also implemented in the covariance model to take account of the genetic and environmental aspects of milk production variation over the course of the lactation. In the present research, breeding values of individual animals based upon 305-day and monthly test-day milk yields were compared. The results indicated that ranking of ten top sires, dams as well as progenies changed as the genetic evaluation of animals switched from the traditional (based on 305-day milk yield) to the new method that was based on the covariance function. Regression analysis of average breeding value of progenies on the first year of their calving showed that the amount of genetic trend obtained from the covariance function for 305-day milk yield was greater than that of the 305-day model (11.607 vs. 3.860 Kg/year) over the period of 16 years of calving. The phenotypic trend for lactation milk yield was 92.97 Kg per year which was statistically significant. This finding indicates that a large proportion of annual increase of milk production of Holstein heifers in Iran has been due to environmental rather than genetic improvement.
