Genetic Analysis of Fertility Traits in Israeli Dairy Cattle

Multiple-trait multiple country genetic evaluation of fertility traits in dairy cattle

Female fertility is one of the most economically important traits for the dairy cattle industry. Because of a few decades of selection mainly for higher milk production, many dairy farms around the world suffer from the consequences of female fertility loss. The aims of this thesis were to study the international genetic evaluation of female fertility traits, to quantify the bias of analyzing m...

Genetic Aspects of Fertility and Longevity in Dairy Cattle

The aim of this thesis was to explore conditions for selection and genetic improvement of fertility and longevity in dairy cattle. The background is that single-trait selection for milk production is known to lead to impaired fertility and consequently to shorter lifespan. This in turn results in financial losses and ethical concerns. Since many years, the Swedish dairy farmers have recorded mi...

Genetic analysis of cow survival in the Israeli dairy cattle population.

The linear model method of VanRaden and Klaaskate for analyzing herd life was expanded. Information on conception and protein yield was included in the estimation of predicted herd life of Israeli Holsteins. Variance components were estimated by a multitrait animal model. Heritability was slightly higher for herd life than for number of parities, but genetic correlations were close to unity. An...

Genetic Dissection of Functional Traits in Dairy Cattle

International Genetic Evaluations for Udder Health Traits in Dairy Cattle

Mark, T. 2005. International Genetic Evaluations for Udder Health Traits in Dairy Cattle. Doctoral dissertation. ISSN 1652-6880, ISBN 91-576-6992-9 The aim of this thesis was to investigate different approaches for international genetic evaluations of dairy sires for udder health traits. For this purpose, deregressed national genetic evaluations were used of Holstein milk somatic cell (SC) from...