Genetic Evaluation of Survival Traits in German Holstein Dairy Cattle Using a Six-Trait Linear Model

Abstract Text: Data of 11.106.125 German dairy cows were used for genetic evaluation of survival in the first three lactations. The lactations were split into two periods before or after 150 days from calving. Survival was defined as the recurrence in the next period. Culling risks ranged between 0.05 and 0.24 for different periods and increased over lactations. Heritability estimates were between 0.020 and 0.055. Most genetic correlations were below 0.90, indicating that the genetics for survival are not the same over the different periods. Correlations between corresponding periods of different lactations were in most cases higher than between periods within the same lactation. Correlations between traits of the second and third lactation were higher than between the first and later lactations.

Keywords:

dairy cattle

survival

longevity