Status as of: 2015-12-20

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	Israel	
Main trait group	Calving [calving ease (CE) – service sire and cow calving, stillbirth (SB) – service sire and cow calving]	
Breed(s)	Holstein	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement	CE: Expressed as percentage of births of calves that are difficult in primiparous heifers, where difficult births are scored as requiring considerable force or "surgical" (3 or 4 on a 4-point scale); sire of calf CE measures tendency of calves from a particular service sire to be born more or less easily; cow CE measures ability of a particular cow to calve easily.
SB: Expressed as percentage of births of calves that are stillborn in primiparous heifers (%SB), where stillborn calves are scored as dead at birth or dead within 48 hours of birth; sire of calf SB measures tendency of calves from a particular service sire to be stillborn more or less often; cow SB measures ability of a particular cow to produce live calves.	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Scores are reported by the farmers via on farm herd management program

CE: Scored by owner on a scale of 1 to 4, where 1 = unassisted,  2 = easy assist, 3 = difficult and 4 = Cesarean section.
SB: Scored by owner on a scale of 1 to 2, where 1 = calf born alive and still alive 48 hours after birth, 2 = calf born dead, or died within 48 hours.	
Time period for data inclusion	Calvings from 1985 and later	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	Parities 1 and 2	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Sire of calf and sire of cow identified, days pregnant was listed as > 261 and < 292 d, age at first calving was > 20 and < 30 mo, gender of calf known, no multiple births.	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)	None
	
Sire categories	All sires (AI and NS) evaluated together, including sires of other breeds mated to Holstein cows 	
Environmental effects, pre-adjustments 	Calving age and month separately for first and second parities	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation	Multi-trait animal-model, including CE and SB on parities1 and 2 as 4 correlated traits	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	Parity-sex (F), herd-year-season (R), cow calving (R), sire of calf(R) 	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	None	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Inverse of relationship matrix calculated for both cow calving and sire of calf.  Groups for animals with unknown parents.  Animal grouped by sex, which parent is unknown, birth year and breed of sire 	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	None	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	Variances and covariances among CE and SB on parities 1 and 2 for cow calving, sire of calf, herd-year-season and residual.  See Appendix CA for h2 estimates	
System validation	Means and SDs for all variables calculated and examined overall as well as for each data submission; means for new bulls, changes for bulls with many records, largest changes. 	
Expression of genetic evaluations	CE: % Calving difficulty
SB: % Still birth	
Definition of genetic reference base

Next base change	Sire of calf effect: mean of sire of calf effect for cows calving in 2010 weighted by number of calvings per bull.
Cow effect:  mean cow effect for cows born in 2010.

March 2021	
Calculation of reliability	Approximated by formulas given in Weller and Ezra (2016)	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Bulls with reliabilities > 50%.	
Number of evaluations/ publications per year	3 (February, June, October)	
Use in total merit index4	CE and SB for sire of the cow calving are included in PD11 with coefficients of -3.0 and -6.0, respectively.  Units of PD11 approximately correspond to kg milk. 	
Anticipated changes in the near future	None	
Key reference on methodology applied	Weller, J. I., and Ezra, E. (2016) Genetic analysis of calving traits by the multi-trait individual animal model.  J. Dairy Sci. 99; 427–442.	
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	Joel Ira Weller, Department of Genetics, Institute of Animal Sciences, ARO, the Volcani Center, P. O. Box 6, Bet Dagan, 50250,  Israel
Tel:  972-8-9484430
Fax: 972-8-9470587
E-mail: weller@agri.huji.ac.il
Web site: http://www.agri.gov.il/People/JoelWeller.html	

Form GE	Appendix CA

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

Country (or countries):	ISRAEL	
Main trait group:	Calving [calving ease (CE) – service sire and cow calving, stillbirth (SB) – service sire and cow calving	
Breed(s):	Holstein	
Trait	h2	Genetic
Variance	Official proof
standardisation formulaa	
Direct CE, parity 1	0.061	11.55	No standardization is applied	
Maternal CE, parity 1	0.030	22.13	No standardization is applied	
Direct SB, parity 1	0.030	3.38	No standardization is applied	
Maternal SB, parity 1	0.014	6.23	No standardization is applied	
a	Expressed as follows:
StandEval = ((Eval − a)/b) ׳ c + d, where a = mean of base adjustment, b = SD of base, c = SD of expression (include sign if scale is reversed), and d = base of expression.

REML estimates of variance components in (%)2.
Variance			Parity 1	Parity 2	
Component	Parity	Trait	Calving ease	Stillbirth	Calving ease	Stillbirth	
Genetic (cow calving)	1	CE	22.13	3.52	5.73	0.56	
		SB	3.52	6.23	-0.04	2.28	
	2	CE	5.73	-0.04	2.64	-0.01	
		SB	0.56	2.28	-0.01	1.37	
							
Sire of calf	1	CE	11.55	5.11	4.71	0.60	
		SB	5.11	3.38	2.19	0.49	
	2	CE	4.71	2.19	2.07	0.28	
		SB	0.60	0.49	0.28	0.08	
							
Residual	1	CE	667.25	156.36	16.22	6.63	
		SB	156.36	430.47	8.97	5.40	
	2	CE	16.22	8.97	335.05	96.03	
		SB	6.63	5.40	96.03	309.10	
							
Herd-year-season	1	CE	47.95	2.41	12.80	-1.00	
		SB	2.41	4.02	0.14	1.33	
	2	CE	12.80	0.14	6.34	0.10	
		SB	-1.00	1.33	0.10	1.29