Genetic Analysis of Dystocia and Calf Mortality in Israeli-Holsteins by Threshold and Linear Models

Abstract

Calvings of 106,751 Israeli Holstein heifers were analyzed for dystocia and calf mortality, scored dichotomously, and a composite trait, scored trichotomously. Dystocia was also studied with 146,973 second and third parity records. Models fitted included herd-year-season, sex of calf, calving age, calving month, sire of cow, sire of calf, and groups of sire of cow and of calf. Herd-year-season, sire of cow and calf, and residuals were random with diagonal variance-covariance matrices. Herd-year-season variance was assume to be 10% of the residual component. Other variance components were estimated by REML for linear models and by the counterpart of REML for threshold models. Heritability estimates were two to five times greater in threshold than in linear models, but correlations between corresponding sire evaluations were all greater than .9. Linear model sire evaluations were skewed positively, whereas threshold model evaluations had symmetrical distributions. Heritability for dystocia was greater in first than in later parities. Correlations between first and later parity sire evaluations were less than .5. Thus, the genetic control of dystocia seems to be different for heifers and cows. Correlations between sire of cow and calf evaluations were less than .3. Correlations between dystocia and calf mortality evaluations were about .7.