Аннотация
The objective of this study was to estimate genetic correlations between conception rates (CR) and test-day (TD) milk yields in Holsteins for different days in milk (DIM) in small and large herds. The data included 217,213 first-parity service records of 94,984 cows in New York State between 1999 and 2003. The \CR\ was defined as the outcome of a single insemination. Conception rate and \TD\ milk were analyzed using a series of threshold-linear models with fixed effects that included herd-test-date for \TD\ milk and herd-year for CR, age, service month, cubic regressions on \DIM\ using Legendre polynomials and with random effects that included herd × sire interaction, sire additive genetic and permanent environments with quadratic random regressions on DIM, service sire for CR, and residual. Variance components were estimated using a Bayesian method via Gibbs sampling. Herds were categorized into small (≤80 cows) and large operations. Large herds produced a higher \TD\ milk (34.0 vs. 30.8 kg), had lower \CR\ (29.5 vs. 34.4%), began breeding earlier (75 vs. 92 d to first service), and had fewer days open (138 vs. 145 d). The average \CR\ was 20% at 50 DIM, increased to about 38% at \DIM\ 100, and then leveled off. Estimated genetic correlations between \CR\ and \TD\ milk stayed around −0.15 for small herds but changed from positive (0.3) at 60 \DIM\ to negative (−0.3) at 120 \DIM\ for large herds. Genetic correlations for \CR\ between small and large herds were highest at 80 \DIM\ and lowest at 140 DIM. The chi-square test showed that the frequency of service records was significantly different during a given week for 71% of large herds and for 15% of small herds, suggesting more timed artificial insemination services in large herds. For the top 15% of cows for milk, fertility peaked around 100 \DIM\ in large herds and at around 100 and 170 \DIM\ in small herds. It seems that optimum breeding practices in large herds of breeding cows earlier are already followed.
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