Genetic

Evaluation

In today’s lesson, we are going to turn our attention to sire genetic evaluations. As we will
discuss later in the course, there has been a lot of genetic change in dairy cattle over the last
half-century. Breeding cows to elite artificial insemination sires has been the primary driver of
genetic change in the dairy industry.

Artificial insemination, or AI for short, started to grow during the 1940s. Bull calves from elite
cows are purchased by an AI company, or bull stud. They collect semen from the bull when he is
a year old or so and that semen is packaged and sold to farmers worldwide. In the United
States, approximately 23 million doses of semen were sold in 2014. We also exported around
20 million doses of dairy semen to other countries. While there are not exact statistics
available, I estimate that approximately 80% of cows result from AI in the United States based
on semen sales statistics.

There are several advantages for a farmer to use AI instead of raising their own bulls. First, bulls
are dangerous and there are stories of farmers or their family members killed by bulls every
year. The other big advantage relative to dairy genetics is that you can purchase semen form
the very best bulls in the world. This allows farmers to improve the genetic merit of their cows
rapidly.

Let’s consider a bull named JENNY-LOU MRSHL TOYSTORY, or Toystory for short. This bull is the
most prolific of all time – he produced over 2 million doses of semen! That doesn’t mean he is
the best bull of all time, but he was a very good bull that produced high volumes of semen and
that lived a long time. Before we look at Toystory’s genetic evaluation, I want to talk about how
we collect data on daughters of bulls like Toystory.

Many farms around the world participate in milk testing programs. The structure of these
programs can vary to some degree, but they generally involve having a technician visit your
farm to record how much milk each cow makes every month. A milk sample is sent to a
laboratory to determine milk fat, milk protein, and other milk components. Farmers use this
data to make decisions related to which cows they should keep and which should be culled and
to determine a cow’s nutritional requirements. The information also helps identify cows that
may have subclinical health issues, and is used for many other day-to-day decisions.

Toystory has over 140,000 daughters worldwide in a milk testing program from over 28,000
herds. Over 42,000 of those daughters are in the United States. Italy, France, Germany, Japan,
and Spain also have in excess of 10,000 daughters. Not all herds have participate in milk testing
so we don’t know how many daughters Toystory has for certain, but it is likely in excess of
200,000.

Because he has so many daughters in a milk testing program, we have a very accurate
assessment of Toystoy’s genetic merit for milk production. We express genetic merit as a
Predicted Transmitting Ability or PTA. A PTA indicates how much a bull’s daughter is expected
to deviate from the general population. Toystory’s daughters produce 488 pounds more milk
than the average US Holstein cow per year. The typical Holstein produces around 24,500
pounds of milk annually. This means Toystory daughters produce just shy of 25,000 pounds. His
daughters also have a slightly lower milk fat percentage than average with a PTA of -0.02%. If
the average cow’s milk is 3.7% fat, Toystory daughters would be expected to have 3.68%.

Milk yield traits are not the only ones we evaluate. We also evaluate longevity, or how long a
cow lives. This is called productive life, and Toystory daughters live 1.7 months less than
average. This is largely due to substandard daughter fertility which is measured by three traits:
Daughter pregnancy rate, cow conception rate, and heifer conception rate. Milk samples that
tell us how much fat and protein are in a cow’s milk can also be evaluated for somatic cell
count. If a cow has an udder infection, or mastitis, white blood cells invade the udder to fight
the infection. This causes an elevation in somatic cell count, and bulls with high somatic cell
daughters also have daughters more likely to get mastitis. Toystory daughters are just a bit
above average for somatic cell score, indicating they are somewhat more likely to have mastitis.

The other major category of fitness traits relates to calving ability. The ease with which a cow
gives birth is called calving ease. We want this number to be low as it indicates that a small
percentage of calves are expected to be born with difficulty. We also want a low stillbirth rate.
Toystory is average for these traits and we expect 6.9 % to be born with some difficulty and 7.1
% are expected to be stillborn.

If you have ever been to a fair and watched a dairy cow show, you know that there are lots of
physical conformation traits that farmers evaluate. These traits are included in a genetic
evaluation. Toystory daughters are taller and more angular, or thinner, than average. The
udders of Toystory daughters are generally considered attractive and with strong attachments
and teats that are placed close together on the udder floor rather than too far on the outside of
the udder. Having teats too widely spaced makes them more susceptible to injury and are
associated with more mastitis in some studies. On the other hand, if they are too close
together, it is difficult to get a milking machine attached easily. We also evaluate the soundness
of a cow’s feet and legs, and Toystory is considered slightly better than average.

I’ve concentrated on sire evaluations, but we evaluate the same traits for cows and calves. Cow
and calf evaluations are less accurate because we don’t have thousands of daughters to
evaluate. Nevertheless, we use pedigree information, a cow’s own records, and genetic
markers to estimate genetic merit for females and such evaluations are important for making
genetic progress.

I’ve talked about a lot of traits. There are more that I have not mentioned, but that are
considered in the online materials. With all these traits, how do farmers sort through the
information when deciding which bulls to use? Multiple traits selection and selection indexes
will be the focus of our next lesson.