Status as of: 26/March/2014

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	Ireland	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Calving Difficulty	
Breed(s)	HOL, RDC
National: All breeds	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	1)	Calving assistance at first parturition
2)	Calving assistance at later parturitions	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Farmer recorded scores
1)	No assistance
2)	Slight assistance
3)	Serious assistance
4)	Veterinary assistance	
Time period for data inclusion	2003 onwards	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	All parities	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Gestation Length between 270 and 300 days
Twins excluded
ET calves excluded	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)		
Sire categories	All sires included	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	None	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	Multi-breed AM-DAM	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	HYS
Sex of calf
Parity
Age of calving (linear & quadratic)
Heterosis and recombination of dam and embryo
Permanent Environment	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	None	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Yes, genetic breed groups included in the 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		
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	PTA – expected percentage of difficult births 	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	Bulls born between 1996 and 2000 with at least 20 calving records

2015	
Calculation of reliability	Approximation of prediction error variances (Tier and Meyer, 2004)	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	All bulls with records in the evaluation are published	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	3	
Use in total merit index4	EBI = 38% production + 35% fertility/survival + 10% calving + 7% beef + 4% udder health + 6% Maintenance

Calving Index includes direct and maternal calving ease, gestation and mortality.	
Anticipated changes in the near future	Use of birth weights as a correlated trait	
Key reference on methodology applied	Tier.B. and K.Meyer, 2004. Approximating prediction error covariances among additive genetic effects within animals in multiple-trait and random regression models. J. Anim. Breed. Genet 1 21: 77:89.
	
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF)
Bandon, Co. Cork, Ireland.
Tel +353 (23) 8820222 Fax +353 (23) 8820229 
aeu@icbf.com
www.icbf.com	
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):	Ireland	
Main trait group:	Calving Traits	
Breed(s):	All breeds	

Trait	h2	genetic
variance	official proof
standardisation formulaa	
Direct calving ease:
	0.09	0.09		
Maternal calving ease:
				
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.