Genetic parameters for dairy calf and replacement heifer wellness traits and their association with cow longevity and health indicators in Holstein cattle

Abstract

High mortality and involuntary culling rates cause great economic losses to the worldwide dairy cattle industry. However, there is low emphasis on wellness traits in replacement animals (dairy calves and replacement heifers) during their development stages in modern dairy cattle breeding programs. Therefore, the main objectives of this study were to estimate genetic parameters of wellness traits in replacement cattle (replacement wellness traits) and obtain their genetic correlations with 12 cow health and longevity traits in the Chinese Holstein population. Seven replacement wellness traits were analyzed, including birth weight, survival from 3 to 60 d (Sur1), survival from 61 to 365 d (Sur2), survival from 366 d to the first calving (Sur3), calf diarrhea, calf pneumonia, and calf serum total protein (STP). Single and bivariate animal models were employed to estimate (co)variance components using the data from 189,980 Holstein cattle. The genetic correlations between replacement wellness traits and cow longevity, health traits were calculated by employing bivariate models, including 6 longevity traits and 6 health traits (clinical mastitis, metritis, ketosis, displaced abomasum, milk fever, and hoof health or hoof disease). The estimated heritabilities (± SE) were 0.335

Recording of calf diseases for potential use in breeding programs: a case study on calf respiratory illness and diarrhea

“…Murray (2011) reported that calf mortality in Canada ranged between 7% and 11%, and 53% of calf mortality was attributed to diarrhea and 21% to respiratory illness. Consequently, many international efforts have aimed at estimating genetic parameters for calf health traits (Heringstad et al 2008;Fuerst-Waltl et al 2010;Henderson et al 2011aHenderson et al , 2011bMcCorquodale et al 2013;Gonzalez-Peña et al 2019;Johnston et al 2020;Zhang et al 2022), showing low heritability for calf diarrhea (range: 0.03-0.06), calf respiratory illness (range: 0.04-0.09), and calf mortality (range: 0.001-0.12). This suggests that selection for these traits is possible, but, with the exception of the Clarifide Plus product (Zoetis 2018) and the new Calf Immunity Index (Semex 2022), the incorporation of these traits in routine genetic evaluations is limited to date.…”