Derivation of economic values for German dairy breeds by means of a bio-economic model—with special emphasis on functional traits

Abstract

To assess the economic importance of breeding traits, economic values (EV) were derived for 3 German dairy cattle breeds: German Holstein (HOL), Angler (ANG), and Red and White Dual-Purpose (RDN). For that purpose, the stochastic bio-economic model SimHerd (SimHerd A/S, Viborg, Denmark) was used, which simulates the expected monetary gain in dairy herds. The EV was calculated as the alteration in average net return of the herd responding to a marginal change in the trait of interest. When deriving EV using SimHerd, economic consequences resulting from changes in the age structure of a dairy herd (i.e., structural herd effects) are considered. However, this requires the simulation of relationships between traits in the bio-economic model. To avoid double counting, the EV of a trait was corrected for effects from alterations in correlated traits using multiple regression analysis. The EV were derived for 23 traits in terms of production, conformation and workability, dairy health, calf survival, and reproduction performance. Furthermore, the relative economic importance of the breeding traits was calculated. Relative emphasis on production was between 39.9 and 44.4% in the breeds studied. Total costs per case of ketosis and metritis ranged from €167 to €196 and €173 to €182, respectively. Highest marginal EV of direct health traits were found for mastitis (€257 to €271 per case) and lameness (€270 to €310 per case). Consequently, relative emphasis on direct health traits was between 15.7 and 17.9%. The EV of reproduction performance showed largest differences among the cattle breeds. Overall relative emphasis on reproduction was 10.5% in HOL, 10.8% in ANG, and 6.5% in RDN. The relative economic importance of cow mortality ranged from 15.5 to 16.0% across the breeds. Collectively, the study showed the high economic importance of functional traits in the cattle breeds studied.

Application of a Bio-Economic Model to Demonstrate the Importance of Health Traits in Herd Management of Lithuanian Dairy Breeds

“…The SimHerd model [ 18 ] is widely used in many dairy cattle modeling studies, i.e., for deriving economic values for setting breeding goals [ 13 , 21 ] or for investigating the economic consequences of crossbreeding [ 22 ]. The SimHerd program models milk yield, feed intake, reproduction and diseases.…”

“…Dystocia was corrected using stillbirth and cow mortality. The regression model can be described as follows [ 11 , 13 , 21 ]: where NetReturn ijk l is the average annual net return, resulting from the i-th simulated replicate (i = 1,…,1000) for the j-th simulated level (j = 1,2) of the trait x ij . ß a denotes the corresponding regression coefficient and, at the same time, represents the estimate of the EV of trait x ij .…”

“…This allows to eliminate the economic effects caused by the correlations of the simulated traits and, thus, to avoid double counting. Schmidtmann et al [ 13 ] defined EVs as the marginal utility of a trait reflecting the direction of each trait in the breeding goals of dairy cattle and the impact on monetary profit while keeping all other traits constant.…”

Emphasis on resilience in dairy cattle breeding: Possibilities and consequences

“…Longevity has also been proposed as a resilience indicator (Schuster et al, 1992). However, other authors have argued that it is better to improve functional traits such as health and fertility than longevity (Schuster et al, 1992;Schmidtmann et al, 2021). Cows with greater production capacity and better health and fertility are better at avoiding involuntary culling and are therefore more valuable for farmers.…”

Objetivos De Selección Para La Crianza De Alpacas Huacaya Bajo Dos Escenarios Económicos en La Sierra Central Del Perú

“…Existen otras metodologías para la estimación de los VRE como los modelos bioeconómicos, que se aplican por ejemplo en peces (Janssen et al, 2017) y vacunos (Schmidtmann, 2021); sin embargo, su aplicación requiere de una evaluación y actualización constante de registros de producción, comercialización y genealogía; lo cual hace complicado su aplicación en la crianza de alpacas de la CCSPR.…”