Status as of: 2019-04-09

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	Australia	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Fertility	
Breed(s)	HOL, JER, GUE, RDC	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	Calving interval (CI), Lactation length (LL), Calving to first service (CFS), Twenty-five-day first service non-return rate (FNRR), Pregnancy rate (PR):
Calving interval: A cow’s CI was considered valid if it was between 290 and 762 days.
Lactation length: Lactation lengths (LLs) above 287 days were accepted as valid and LLs longer than 451 days were set at the maximum of 451 days
Calving to first service: This measures the ability of cows to show heat early following calving. All first services between 10 and 470 days after calving were accepted as valid
Twenty-five-day first service non-return rate: Twenty-five-day first service non-return rate (FNRR) is measured as the ability of cows to conceive when mated. Cows with valid mating data were coded as 100 (not returned) if another mating during lactation was absent. Cows with additional matings in the same lactation were coded 0 (or returned).
Pregnancy rate: Pregnancy rate measures the ability of cows to get pregnant over the whole mating period and is highly correlated to 6-week pregnancy rate (i.e. breeding objective) but is available on only about 5% of the cows with previous calving date. Cows are coded pregnant (coded as 100) if the age of the foetus is between 30 and 270 days. Records with pregnancy test data where the result column is ‘0’ are coded non-pregnant or 0.
The trait Interbull will analyse will be Calving interval converted to 6 weeks in-calf rate.	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Australian Milk recording centers collect Fertility records 	
Time period for data inclusion	Approximately 1985	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	Only one record per animal is used	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Cows with unknown sires are excluded	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)	N/A	
Sire categories	All sires	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	No pre-adjustments	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	Multi-trait Animal Model 

CI LL CFS PR FNRR = HYSA (herd-year-season-age) (F; 393543 levels) + Heterosis(R) + CTLT calving to last test date in the herd) (F; 22) + MOC (month of calving) (F; 12) + APC(age-parity class) (F; 155) + Animal (R;  3,687,265 levels ) + PE (R; 3,124,990 levels )  + error	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	HYSA (herd-year-season-age) (F; 393543 levels)
Heterosis(R)
CTLT calving to last test date in the herd) (F; 22)
MOC (month of calving) (F; 12) 
APC(age-parity class) (F; 155) 
PE (R; 3,124,990 levels )  
	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	
No adjustments	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Totally of 84 groups were formed based on birth year, breed purity and country of origin.	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	Trait supplied to Interbull contains only Australian data. The published trait contains AUS and foreign information.	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	See appendix GE	
System validation	Method 3 was used for trend validation. The comparison was between breeding values from August 2008 and August 2012. See appendix TR_VAL
 	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	No standardization. 
(eval-base), where base= mean eval of base animals, where eval = EBV on scale of measurements 
	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	5-years stepwise. AI bulls born between 2002 - 2006 with reliability > 50%.
2021	
Calculation of reliability	Ducrocq & Schneider Generalization of the information source method to compute reliabilities in test models; Interbull Bulletin (2007).	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Bulls with 55% reliability and daughters in 10 herds
	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	3 per year. January, April and August	
Use in total merit index4	BPI = 1.79 x Fat ABV + 6.92 x Protein ABV – 0.048 x Milk ABV + 3.9 x Survival function ABV + 1.2 x Milking Speed ABV + 2.0 X Temperament ABV -1.07 X Cell Count ABV 0 x Liveweight ABV + 6.94 x Daughter Fertility ABV + 2.289 x MamSysCoeff ABV + 0.817 x UdDepCoeff ABV + 2.258 x OTCoeff ABV + 1.277 x PinSetCoeff ABV + 0.14875 x FeedEffCoeff ABV
	
Anticipated changes in the near future	No changes are planned in the near future.	
Key reference on methodology applied	J. Dairy Sci. 96 :1–13, 2012	
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	DataGene Limited
Mob: +61 438 761 822 AgriBio Road Bundoora MELBOURNE  VIC  3083 
Email: mshaffer@datagene.com.au
Web site:  www.datagene.com.au
	
1) Either: Production (e.g. milk, fat, protein), Conformation, Health (e.g. mastitis resistance, milk somatic cell, resistance to diseases other than mastitis), Longevity, Calving (e.g. stillbirth, calving ease), Female fertility (e.g. non-return rate, interval between reproductive events, number of AI’s, heat strength), Workability (e.g. milking speed, temperament), Beef production, Efficiency (e.g. body weight, energy balance, body conditioning score), or Other traits.
2) Indicate frequencies per category if the trait is categorical and specify transformation of data if practiced.
3) Use abbreviations for most common effects (see document with list of abbreviations at http://www-interbull.slu.se/service_documentation/General/list_of_abbreviations.rtf) and indicate random (R) or fixed (F).
4) Please give economic weights and indicate how they are expressed (preferably in genetic standard deviation units).

Form GE	Appendix GE

Parameters used in genetic evaluation

Country (or countries):	Australia	
Main trait group:	Health	
Breed (repeat as necessary):	Holstein, Jersey, Guernsey, Australian Red	

Trait	Definition	ITBa	h2b	genetic
varianceb	official proof
standardisation formulac	
			Trait I	Trait I		
Calving interval			0.036			
						
	Pooled parameters					
	Residual variance					
a	Indicate, with X, traits that are submitted to Interbull for international genetic evaluations.
b	If repeated records are treated as separate traits, provide heritability estimates and genetic variances separately for each trait, as well as for all traits pooled, i.e. for the trait submitted to Interbull.
c	Expressed as follows:
(eval-base) where eval = EBV on scale of measurement (calving interval), base= mean eval of base animals

Milking speed Eval=((eval-a)/b)*c+d where a=90.8, b=a, c=sign, and d=90.8.
Temperament Eval=((eval-a)/b)*c+d where a=90.3, b=a, c=sign, and d=90.3.

Form GE	Appendix TR_VAL

Estimates of regression coefficients and bias from Method 3 for different breeds and assumed 
Correlations obtained from August 2008 and August 2012

Breed	Number of bulls	Assumed correlation	Regression	Bias	
Calving interval		0.96			
Holstein	1355		-0.0002622093         	0.0001579297	
Jersey	241		-0.0004333735         	0.0003095709	
Guernsey	Small number of bulls				
RDC	38		0.0002572208         	0.0005040807	
Calving interval		0.98			
Holstein	1355		-0.0002752636         	0.0001768480	
Jersey	241		-0.0003791235         	0.0003099713	
Guernsey	Small number of bulls				
RDC	38		0.0001288407         	0.0005553468