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1 Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Dept. of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Research Centre Foulum, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark
2 The Danish Agricultural Advisory Centre, Udkærsvej 15, Skejby, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
3 The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Dept. of Animal Science and Animal Health, Grønnegårdsvej 2, DK-1870, Frederiksberg C, Denmark
Corresponding author: M. Hansen; e-mail: mxh{at}lr.dk.
The objective of this study was to make an inference about the direct and maternal genetic variation of stillbirth for first-calving Holstein cows and to estimate the effect of breed and heterosis for original Danish black and white and Holstein-Friesian. A Bayesian threshold model, which included correlated genetic effects of sires and maternal grandsires was used. Marginal posterior distributions of effects were obtained using Gibbs sampling. Point estimates were compared with results from a linear model using REML. Data with and without twins were analyzed and models with and without effects of breed and heterosis were fitted, but estimates of genetic parameters were almost identical. In all the analyses with threshold models, the marginal posterior mean (and standard deviation) was 0.10 (0.014) for the direct heritability, 0.13 (0.015) for the maternal heritability, and 0.05 (0.10) for the genetic correlation between direct and maternal effects. The stillbirth rate tended to increase with a higher proportion of Holstein-Friesian in the calf and in the dam, but no effects of breed and heterosis were significant. Joint sampling of all location parameters was found superior to univariate sampling in terms of much better mixing properties of the fixed effects. Based on the results showing genetic variation for stillbirth at first calving, both the direct and the maternal effect could be included in the breeding program.
Key Words: stillbirth • Holstein-Friesian • genetic parameter • threshold model
Abbreviation key: CG = contemporary group, ECP = extreme category problem, HF = Holstein-Friesian, MGS = maternal grandsire, ODBW = original Danish black and white, S-MGS = sire-maternal grandsire
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