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Comparison of heritability estimates for herd life in register and non-register Iranian Holstein heifers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2017

H Rezaee ,
H Farhangfar  and
P Rowlinson
H Rezaee
Affiliation:
Birjand University, Birjand, Iran
H Farhangfar*
Affiliation:
Birjand University, Birjand, Iran
P Rowlinson
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
*
Email: hfarhangfar2003@yahoo.co.uk
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Extract

The main aim of animal breeding programmes is to increase productivity and profitability of farm livestock through genetically improving the economic merit of farm livestock (Smith, 1998). This can be achieved by increasing the mean value of a population for one or several economically important traits by the genetic improvement of the animals in this population. In dairy cow husbandry, many traits of economic importance such as milk production and reproductive traits has long been of interests for breeders to increase profitability of dairy farm enterprise. Herd life, as a complex trait associated with longevity of animals, has been long considered to be related to profitability of dairy herds due to reduce replacement costs and increase the proportion of farm resources used for the milking herd rather than for replacements (Brotherstone et al., 1998). In fact, as pointed out by Burnside et al. (1984), lifetime profitability is affected by many factors such as production per lactation, length of productive life, age at first calving, calving interval as well as input and output prices. The main objective of the present study was to estimate heritability of herd life for register and non-register Iranian Holstein heifers.

Type
Poster presentations
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science , Volume 2006 , March 2006 , pp. 83
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The American Society of International Law

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References

Brotherstone, S., Veerkamp, R.F. and Hill, W.G. 1998. Predicting breeding values for herd life of Holstein-Friesian dairy cattle from lifespan and type. Animal Science 67: 405-411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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