Status as of: 2020-02-09

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	Australia	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Health (Mastitis)	
Breed(s)	HOL, JER, GUE, RDC	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	Clinical mastitis, binary trait	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Farmer analysis and treatment 	
Time period for data inclusion	Approximately 1985	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	3 parities	
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 Model
Including Mas, YD for SCC and score for Udder Depth
Repeated measures for Mas, single observation for SCC YD and Udder Depth	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	HYS, month, parity	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	
No adjustments	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Totally of 77 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		
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	No standardization – BVs on 0-1 scale
(eval-base), where base= mean eval of base animals, where eval = EBV on scale of measurements	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	Same as for SCC

2021	
Calculation of reliability	MiX99 Option 3	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations		
Number of evaluations / publications per year	3 official evaluations per year. April, August, December	
Use in total merit index4	Not included	
Anticipated changes in the near future	No changes are planned in the near future.	
Key reference on methodology applied	Abdelsayed, M., M. Haile-Mariam and J. E. Pryce, 2017. Genetic parameters for health traits using data collected from genomic information nucleus herds. J. Dairy Sci. 100:9643–9655	
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:	Udder Health	
Breed (repeat as necessary):	Holstein, Jersey, Guernsey, Australian Red	

Trait	Definition	ITBa	h2b	genetic
varianceb	official proof
standardisation formulac	
			Trait I	Trait I		
MAS			0.096	0.0179		
	PE variance			0.083412		
	Residual variance			0.085239		
						
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:
StandEval=((eval-a)/b)*c+d where a=mean of the base adjustment, b=standard deviation of the base, c=standard deviation of expression (include sign if scale is reversed), and d=base of expression.

Form GE	Appendix PR

Form GE	Appendix TR_VAL

Estimates of regression coefficients and bias from Method 3 for different breeds and assumed 
Correlations obtained from August 2002 and August 2006

Breed	Number of bulls	Assumed correlation	Regression	Bias	
		0.95			
Holstein					
Jersey					
Guernsey					
RDC					
		0.96			
Holstein					
Jersey					
Guernsey					
RDC					
		0.97			
Holstein					
Jersey					
Guernsey					
RDC					
		0.98			
Holstein					
Jersey					
Guernsey					
RDC					
		0.99			
Holstein					
Jersey					
Guernsey					
RDC