Status as of: 2020-03-17

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	Germany, Austria and Luxembourg	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Udder health	
Breed(s)	HOLstein (Black & White, Red & White), Red Dairy Cattle (RDC), 
JERsey	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	The trait 'mastitis' is defined as the number of mastitis events within lactation, with 0 indicating no recorded mastitis and values > 0 indicating the number of distinct mastitis events.	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Mastitis records extracted from all direct health data made available for health monitoring and recorded according to the ICAR Central Health Key. Data collected by veterinarians and farmers are used for identifying affected animals and matched to information on herd mates without mastitis records.	
Time period for data inclusion	All direct health records from 2008 onwards	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	All lactations	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Allowed ranges of age of calving for first three lactations are 20-40, 30-56 and 44-75 months, respectively. Sire and dam sire must be known. Lactations without mastitis records are only considered in genetic evaluation if reaching at least 75 % of the full length of the period of risk.	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)	N/A	
Sire categories	All categories of bulls are evaluated jointly	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	No pre-adjustments for environmental effects	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	MT –RP – BLUP – AM	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	Fixed effects of parity class (1, 2, 3, ≥4) within region and herd - calving year - calving season; random permanent environmental effect (single observation per parity, lactation records as repeated observations for the animal)	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	No adjustment for heterogeneous variance	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	No genetic groups are defined. Ancestors of the cows in the health data set are traced back as far as possible in pedigree.	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	No	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	Use Appendix GE for heritability/genetic variance estimates; for multiple-trait genetic evaluations, provide genetic correlation estimates between traits separately.
Use also appendices PR, CO, BCO, SM, LO, CA, as applicable, if you participate in the international genetic evaluations of Interbull	
System validation	- Regularly performing trend validation (Interbull methods II and III)
- Routinely checking stability of genetic evaluations over time
- Routinely checking quality of input data and pedigree
- Residual and Mendelian sampling analyses	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	EBV for mastitis (MAS) is calculated from EBV for early mastitis (EM) and EBV for late mastitis (LM) as:
	EBVMAS = 0.6 EBVEM + 0.4 EBVLM.
Relative breeding value RZMAS is published and defined based on a cow population that is updated yearly and has an average of 100. RZMAS is standardized to a genetic standard deviation of 12 such that higher values indicate favorable mastitis resistance.	
Definition of genetic reference base

Next base change	A cow genetic base for udder health EBV includes all active Holstein cows of last three birth years. A joint base is used across breeds.

April 2021	
Calculation of reliability	Multi-trait effective daughter contribution method (Liu et al. 2004)	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	AI Bulls with daughters in at least 10 herds und a minimum reliability of 50% are published.	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	3 / April, August and December	
Use in total merit index4	N/A	
Anticipated changes in the near future	Trait definition within lactation, adjustment for heterogeneous variance.	
Key reference on methodology applied		
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	IT Solutions for Animal Production
(Vereinigte Informationssysteme Tierhaltung w. V., vit),
Genetic Evaluation Unit
Heinrich-Schroeder-Weg 1, D-27283 Verden (Aller)
GERMANY
Phone:	0049 - 4231 - 955 10
Fax:	0049 - 4231 - 955 166
e-Mail:	ge@vit.de or info@vit.de, website: http://www.vit.de	
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): 	Germany, Austria and Luxembourg	
Main trait group: 	Udder health	
Breed (repeat as necessary): 	HOLstein (Black & White, Red & White), Red Dairy Cattle (RDC), 
JERsey	
Trait 	Definition 	ITBa 	h2b 	genetic varianceb 	official proof
standardisation formulac 	
Early mastitis (EM)	Mastitis record (reported health event) in the time interval -10 DIM to 50 DIM		0.029	0.008	RZEM=(-1)*((eval-0)/
0.00619)*12+100	
Late mastitis (LM)	Mastitis record (reported health event) after 50 DIM 
until end of lactation		0.072	0.076	RZLM=(-1)*((eval-0)/
0.06050)*12+100	
Mastitis (MAS)	Index from Early mastitis (60 %) and Late mastitis (40 %)		0.080	0.019	Relative index RZMAS
RZMAS=(-1)*((eval-0)/
0.01894)*12+100	
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 SM
Parameters for national genetic evaluations for udder health traits as provided to Interbull

Country (or countries): 	Germany, Austria and Luxembourg	
Main trait group: 	Health 	
Breed(s): 	HOLstein (Black & White, Red & White), Red Dairy Cattle (RDC), 
JERsey	
Trait 	h2a 	genetic variancea 	official proof
standardisation formulab 	
Milk Somatic Cell: 				
Clinical Mastitis: 	0.080
(based on combination of Early mastitis and Late mastitis) 	0.019	Relative index RZ Clinical Mastitis
RZ Clinical Mastitis=(-1)*((eval-0) /0.018935)*12+100	
a 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.b 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. 

Table 1: Genetic parameters for relative index of mastitis (RZ Clinical Mastitis) with heritabilities on diagonal, genetic correlations above diagonal and phenotypic correlations below diagonal
 
Trait	Genetic variance	Early mastitis	Late mastitis	Mastitis
(Index)	
Early mastitis	0,00619	.029	.757		
Late mastitis 	0,06050	.121	.072		
Mastitis (index)	0.018935			.080