Relationships Between Age and Body Weight at Calving, Feed Intake, Production, Days Open, and Selection Indexes in Ayrshires and Holsteins

¹ Dairy Herd Analysis Service, Macdonald College of McGill University, 21,111 Lakeshore Road, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, PQ, Canada H9X 1C0 and Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock, Department of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1

Records collected between December 1979 and June 1986 provided measures of age and weight at calving, days open, 305-d measures of milk, fat, and protein yield, milk value, feed cost, and total energy intake for 8156 Ayrshire and 80,604 Holstein cows in first lactation. Phenotypic and genetic variances and covariances were estimated from separate analyses per breed using a multiple trait mixed model that included traits of body weight at calving, energy intake, 3.5% FCM, and days open with (five-trait model) and without (four-trait model) age at calving, which was treated as a fixed effect in the four-trait model. Sixty-five Ayrshire and 410 Holstein sires were treated as random in the analyses. The resulting parameters were used to develop four- and five-trait selection indexes, which were then paired with a number of traits in a series of two-trait analyses. Heritability estimates were higher in Holsteins than in Ayrshires for all traits, especially for 3.5% FCM. Also, with the exception of days open, which had a very low heritability (.01 and .03), heritability estimates were higher when traits were adjusted for age at calving as a fixed effect. Phenotypic correlations between traits were almost identical for the two breeds, whereas genetic correlations were similar. Selection index weights were smaller in Ayrshires than corresponding weights in Holsteins, and the relative weighting of the traits was not the same. Nevertheless, in both breeds, genetic correlations between the indexes and milk production, fat percentages, and protein percentages and milk value were all very high, exceeding .936. Total energy intake, feed cost, and days open were also very positively correlated with the indexes. Weight at calving was negatively genetically correlated with FCM. The relationship between body weight and the selection indexes was even more negative.

Key Words: selection indexes • milk production • feed intake • age

Submitted on November 13, 1990
Accepted on August 2, 1991

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