Status as of: 2009-04-28

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	  GBR	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Calving traits	
Breed(s)	Holstein/Friesian	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	Calving ease scores on the scale of 1 to 4 , Snell transformation to obtain normal scores	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Milk recording data collected by ICAR approved recording organisations (NMR & HUK)	
Time period for data inclusion	Insemination data  since 1995	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	Parities 1 to 10	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Sires  and maternal grandsire must be known, birth and caving dates are known and valid. Valid herd book number or earmark number.	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)	Not applicable	
Sire categories	All bulls with progeny information including domestic and foreign AI bulls plus natural service herd sires	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	None	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	Sire and maternal sire model was fitted 	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	Herd-year, calving month, lactation number, calf sex, calf sex by lactation number interaction, calving age and percentage Holstein for service sire and sire of the cow	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	None	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Relationship matrix for service sires and sire of cow included	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	None	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	Use Appendix 
	
System validation	Interbull method 3, monitoring trends  and comparison with previous runs 	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	Predicted transmitting abilities send to Interbull   but published as percentage calving easy	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	Sires born in 1995 and 1996 with reliabilities of least 50 percent	
Calculation of reliability	Method of Harris and Johnson (1998). Information source reliability method applied to MACE. Interbull bulletin 17: 31-36	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Bulls with al least 30 percent reliability	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	Three runs per year	
Use in total merit index4	Not yet but anticipated	
Anticipated changes in the near future	Fit an Animal model for direct and maternal  effects	
Key reference on methodology applied	Banos , G. (2008) Genetic parameters of calving performance and still birth rate in UK Holstein cattle. Unpublished report	
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	EGENES, SRUC  Research
Roslin Institute Building
Bush Estate
Midlothian
Scotland, UK
EH26  9RG
Tel:  +44 -131-535-3241
Fax:  +44-131-535-3121
E-mail: mike.coffey@sruc.ac.uk
Internet:  www.egenes.co.uk
	
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 CA

Parameters for national genetic evaluations for calving traits as provided to Interbull

Country (or countries):		
Main trait group:	Calving Traits	
Breed(s):		

Trait	h2	genetic
variance	official proof
standardisation formulaa	
Direct calving ease:**
	0.068	0.041708		
Maternal calving ease**:
	0.044	0.02667		
Direct stillbirth:
				
Maternal stillbirth:
				
a	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.

** Genetic correlation of -0.570  between direct and maternal calving ease was used in the evaluation.