We obtained heritability and (co)variance component estimates for slaughter conformation scores at 420 days of age (SCS420), age at calving (first, AFC; second, ASC), calving occurrence until 38 months of age (CP38), weight at 420 days of age (W420), and scrotal circumference at 420 days (SC420) in Canchim (5/8 Charolais + 3/8 Zebu) cattle. A total of 23,168 records of Canchim animals, includin...

Background: Requirements for successful implementation of multivariate animal threshold models including phenotypic and genotypic information are not known yet. Here simulated horse data were used to investigate the properties of multivariate estimators of genetic parameters for categorical, continuous and molecular genetic data in the context of important radiological health traits using mixed...

Mechanistic animal growth models can incorporate a description of the genotype as represented by underlying biological traits that aim to specify the animal's genetic potential for performance, independent from the environmental factors captured by the models. It can be argued that these traits may therefore be more closely associated to genetic potential, or components of genetic merit that ar...

Somatic cells count (SCC), milk yield (MY) and pedigree information of 2,791 first lactation cows that calved between 1990 and 2010 on 259 Thai farms were used to estimate genetic parameters and trends for SCC and its genetic association with MY. The SCC were log-transformed (lnSCC) to make them normally distributed. An average information-restricted maximum likelihood procedure was used to est...

The objective was to examine the direct and correlated responses of linear type, yield traits, and somatic cell scores (SCS) to divergent selection for predicted transmitting ability for type (PTAT) in Holsteins, while maintaining selection for yield traits across lines. For four generations, one-half of the University of Nebraska research Holstein herd was bred to Holstein sires with PTAT > 1....

This study provides estimates of genetic parameters for various diseases, fertility and 305-day milk production traits in dairy cattle using data from a UK national milk recording scheme. The data set consisted of 63891 multiple lactation records on diseases (mastitis, lameness, milk fever, ketosis and tetany), fertility traits (calving interval, conception to first service, number of services ...

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of marker density, level of heritability, number of QTLs, and size of training set on the genomic accuracy over three generations. Thereby, a trait was simulated with heritability of 0.10, 0.25 or 0.40. For each animal, a genome with 20 chromosomes, 1 Morgan each, was simulated. Different marker densities (2000, 4000 and 6000 markers) and 400 an...

Bovine lactoferrin (LF) is mainly present in milk and shows important physiological and biological functions. The aim of this study was to estimate the heritability and correlation values of LF content in bovine milk with different economic traits as milk yield (MY), fat and protein percentages, and somatic cell score (SCS). Variance components of the studied traits were estimated by REML using...

Genetic and phenotypic parameters for production traits and somatic cell count (SCC) for Jersey dairy cattle in Zimbabwe were estimated. A total of 10986 lactation records were obtained from Zimbabwe Livestock Identification Trust, with cows calving in the period from 1996 to 2008. An ASReml program fitting an animal model was used for the analyses. Heritability estimates for milk yield, fat yi...