A National Sire Fertility Index - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

A National Sire Fertility Index

Description:

A National Sire Fertility Index – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:146
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 36
Provided by: admi1067
Category:
Tags: dax | fertility | index | jo | national | sire

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: A National Sire Fertility Index


1
A National Sire Fertility Index


2
Bull fertility (phenotypic ranking)
  • Estimated relative conception rate (ERCR)
  • 70-day nonreturn rate (NRR)
  • Source
  • DRMS, Raleigh, NC, 1986-2005
  • USDA, Beltsville, MD, 2006-present
  • Western Bull Fertility Analysis
  • 75-d veterinary-confirmed conception rate (CR)
  • Source AgriTech, Visalia, CA, 2003 -present

3
Sire conception rate (SCR)
  • New USDA service-sire phenotypic fertility
    evaluation
  • Based on CR rather than NRR
  • More accurate
  • Inseminations from most of the United States
  • Services 17 (not just first)
  • Additional model effects included
  • Implemented August 2008

4
Data included
  • Only AI inseminations with pregnancy status
    confirmation (success or failure)
  • Inseminations 17 for cows in lactations 15
  • Lactation length at breeding limited to 30365
    DIM
  • Cow age of 215 yr
  • Standardized milk yield
  • gt10,000 lb for Holsteins
  • gt8,000 lb for Brown Swiss
  • gt6,000 lb for all other breeds

5
Data included (cont.)
  • Most recent 4 yr of breeding records
  • Inseminations 70 d before data submission
    deadline
  • 6 traditional U.S. dairy breeds
  • Ayrshire
  • Brown Swiss
  • Guernsey
  • Holstein
  • Jersey
  • Milking Shorthorn

6
Data excluded
  • Embryo-transfer donors
  • Sexed semen
  • Heifers
  • Consecutive services within 10 d of each other
  • Only information from later service kept
  • Earlier service not considered when assigning
    subsequent service numbers for same lactation

7
Data excluded (cont.)
  • Herd with 50 of milking cows without recorded
    breeding
  • Herd CR lt10 or gt90
  • Service sire lt0.8 yr old

8
Data sources (August 2008)
  • 3 dairy records processing centers
  • AgriTech Analytics
  • AgSource Cooperative Service
  • DRMS
  • gt99 of data
  • 46 States and Puerto Rico

9
Development of SCR
  • 4-year research effort primarily by
  • Dr. Melvin Kuhn
  • Bull variables (expanded service-sire effect)
  • Cow (nuisance) variables

10
Bull variables
  • Inbreeding
  • Service sire
  • Embryo
  • Bull age
  • AI organization combined with mating year
  • Bull

11
Cow variables
  • Combined herd, mating year, cow parity, and cow
    registry status
  • Combined mating month, year, and State
  • Cow parity
  • Service number
  • Short interval between matings
  • Cow age
  • Cow standardized milk yield
  • Cows permanent environment
  • Cows genetics

12
SCR model
  • Categorical effects
  • Individual parities for lactations 15
  • State-year-month of insemination group
  • 6 standardized milk yield groups
  • Service number for inseminations 17
  • Cow age
  • Herd-year-season-parity-registry status class
  • Covariate (linear regression) effects
  • Service-sire inbreeding coefficient
  • Mating inbreeding coefficients
  • Random effects
  • Service-sire age group
  • AI organization-insemination year group
  • Individual service sire
  • Cows genetic ability to conceive
  • Cows permanent environmental effect
  • Residual

The most complex model that I know of to
evaluate animal performance Bennet Cassell,
VPISU, 2008
13
Variances
  • Service-sire age 0.00014
  • AI organization-insemination year 0.00011
  • Service sire 0.00054
  • Cow 0.00294
  • Cows permanent environment 0.00533
  • Residual 0.19697

14
SCR accuracy
  • Reliability (R) n/(n 260)
  • n number of inseminations
  • Constant 260 derived by including all random
    effects in expanded service sire term
  • Confidence interval (CI)
  • 0.02313 true standard deviation
  • 1.282 standard normal variate from normal
  • distribution for an 80 CI

15
Relationship of R and 80 CI
Inseminations R () 80 CI
200 43 2.2
300 54 2.0
500 66 1.7
1,000 79 1.3
2,000 88 1.0
5,000 95 0.7
10,000 97 0.5
15,000 98 0.4
20,000 99 0.3
16
Proposed CI table
Bull name SCR () R () 80 CI
A 1.6 99 1.3 to 1.9
B 0.8 98 0.4 to 1.2
C -0.4 90 -1.3 to 0.5
D 1.1 82 -0.2 to 2.4
E -3.8 77 -5.2 to -2.4
F 2.3 59 0.4 to 4.2
17
SCR release
  • Released 3 times a year in conjunction with USDA
    national genetic evaluations
  • January
  • April
  • August
  • Only AI bulls 15 yr old
  • Active AI
  • Progeny test

18
SCR release (cont.)
  • Overall matings
  • Holstein 300 in 10 herds
  • Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, 200 in 5 herds
  • Guernsey, Jersey
  • Milking Shorthorn 100 in 5 herds
  • Matings during current 12 mo
  • Holsteins, Jersey 100
  • Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, 30
  • Guernsey
  • Milking Shorthorn 10

19
Interpretation of SCR
  • Phenotypic predictor of bull fertility
  • Expressed as relative CR
  • Reported as a percentage
  • Average bull has SCR of 0.0
  • Standard deviation for August 2008 SCR was 2.4

20
Examples
  • Bull with SCR of 3.0 expected to have 3 higher
    CR than average bull and 6 higher CR than bull
    with SCR of -3.0
  • Bull with SCR of 2.0 expected to have CR of 32
    in herd that normally averages 30 and
    historically has used bulls with average SCR

21
Impact of individual effects
  • Individual effects sequentially removed from full
    model to test alternative models
  • Service-sire inbreeding
  • Mating inbreeding
  • Service-sire age
  • AI organization-insemination year
  • Each effect added back to the model and another
    effect removed

22
Correlations of alternatives with full model
Alternative model AI organization AI organization AI organization AI organization AI organization AI organization AI organization
Alternative model All A B C D E F
No mating inbreeding 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
No service-sire inbreeding 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
No AI organization- insemination year 0.98 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
No service-sire age 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.94 0.93 0.92
Interpolated age 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.98 0.98
23
Service-sire age effect
  • Greatest impact on SCR prediction across and
    within AI organization
  • Interpolated age expected to provide most
    consistent evaluations across time
  • Not intended for comparison of rankings at a
    common age
  • Provide more accurate representation of
    phenotypic value of CR for a bulls semen at this
    point in his life

24
Maximum absolute change
  • Individual bull
  • Comparison with January 2008 full-model
    evaluation
  • Change
  • Alternative models (percentage units)
  • No AI organization-insemination year 2.2
  • No service sire-age 1.9
  • Interpolated age 0.9
  • No service-sire inbreeding 0.8
  • No mating inbreeding 0.2

25
Prediction effectiveness
  • July 2006 Holstein SCR from alternative models
  • Average CR for later (July 2006 January 2008)
    inseminations
  • Deviation of outcome for each later insemination
    from average for all inseminations in same
    herd-year-season
  • Herd fertility differences removed
  • 300 inseminations for each bull SCR and either
    100 or 300 inseminations for later CR

26
Bull correlations of SCR with later CR
Model Bulls with ?100 inseminations Bulls with ?300 inseminations
Full model 0.6213 0.6526
No mating inbreeding 0.6222 0.6536
No service-sire inbreeding 0.6189 0.6497
No AI organization- insemination year 0.6179 0.6488
No service-sire age 0.6089 0.6326
Interpolated age 0.6238 0.6549
27
Optimal AI organization-insemination year
  • AI industry concern
  • NAAB code used to assign bulls to AI
    organization-insemination years
  • Not as effective in predicting future CR as
    assigning all bulls to most recent AI
    organization-year
  • Assigning bulls to AI organization-year just
    prior to most recent also of considerable value

28
Optimal AI organization-year (cont.)
  • Additional studies applied multiple-regression
    methods
  • Prediction of future CR most improved by
    including 2 most recent AI organization-years
  • 60 weighting for most recent year
  • 40 weighting for previous year

29
Herd fertility
  • Relationship between bull SCR and fertility of
    herds for which bull was service sire
  • Herd-years stratified into 3 equally sized groups
    by CR
  • 27.3 Low fertility
  • 27.4 to 33.9 Medium fertility
  • 34.0 High fertility
  • Bulls stratified into 3 equally sized groups by
    SCR
  • -0.9 Low fertility
  • -0.8 to 1.0 Medium fertility
  • 1.1 High fertility

30
Herd CR (August 2008)
Service-sire fertility Herd fertility Herd fertility Herd fertility
Service-sire fertility Low Medium High
Low 20.3 27.4 35.3
Medium 22.6 30.0 38.7
High 24.8 32.4 41.4
Difference 4.5 5.0 6.1
31
Conclusions
  • New SCR evaluation
  • Based on confirmed pregnancies
  • Measures phenotypic service-sire fertility
  • Expressed as a relative CR (average bull has SCR
    of 0.0)
  • Standard deviation of 2.4 in August 2008

32
Conclusions (cont.)
  • First official SCR evaluations released in August
    2008 for active-AI and progeny-test bulls
  • Data from gt80 of DHI herds that collect breeding
    information
  • Most States and Puerto Rico represented for 6
    dairy breeds

33
Conclusions (cont.)
  • SCR more accurate than ERCR because of data from
    3 times more inseminations
  • More DHI herds (Western herds added)
  • Extra services (27)

34
Female fertility evaluations
  • Genetic evaluations to be implemented in 2009
  • Heifer conception rate (HCR)
  • Percentage of inseminated heifers that become
    pregnant at each service
  • Cow conception rate (CCR)
  • Percentage of inseminated cows that become
    pregnant at each service
  • Similar to reporting for daughter pregnancy rate
    (DPR)
  • Will be reported to Interbull

35
Acknowledgments
  • Reproductive records supplied by AgriTech
    Analytics, AgSource Cooperative Service, and DRMS
  • Willingness of U.S. dairy producers to record
    their management data essential for continuation
    of effective fertility evaluation
  • Suggestions provided by the National Association
    of Animal Breeders Fertility Committee
    beneficial in development of SCR
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com