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!	Workability	
Breed(s)	HOL, JER, GUE, RDC	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	Milking speed, Temperament: animals are scored on a 1 to 5 scale with the middle value = satisfactory. The trait Interbull will analyse will be in units of % of daughters satisfactory or better for the trait.	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Australian Milk recording centers collect Workability 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	Single-trait Animal Model 

Workability = HYSA (herd-year-season-age) (F; 83842 levels) + Heterosis(R) + Animal (R;  1,853,701 levels ) + error	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	Herd-year-season-age (F; 83842 levels )
Heterosis(R)
	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	
No adjustments	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Totally of 100 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 2002 and August 2006. See appendix TR_VAL
 	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	(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	Robinson & Jones JDS(1985)	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Bulls with 57% 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	AAABG in 1985	
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		
Milking speed			0.25			
			Trait II	Trait II		
Temperament			0.16			
	Residual variance		Trait I	Trait I		
						
			Trait II	Trait II		

	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:
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.

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 2007 and August 2012

Breed	Number of bulls	Assumed correlation	Regression	Bias	
Milking speed		0.96			
Holstein	1235		0.0000034151         	0.0000023909	
Jersey	197		0.0000137975         	0.0000071653	
Guernsey	Small number of bulls				
RDC	41		-0.0000045722         	0.0000084918	
Temperament		0.96			
Holstein	1235		0.0000042282         	0.0000020792	
Jersey	197		0.0000219190         	0.0000057490	
Guernsey	Small number of bulls				
RDC	41		-0.0000102240         	0.0000085061