Status as of: 2020-01-04

Form GE

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	NORWAY	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	CALVING	
Breed(s)	Norwegian Red (NRF)	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	Calving ease.  Subjectively scored by the farmer at a 3 level scale: 1=”none”, 2=”some” and 3=“large” difficulties. Unobserved calvings are not used.
Stillbirth. (1=alive at 24 hours, 2=dead at birth or within 24 hours).
Calf size.  Subjectively scored by the farmer at a 3 level scale: 1=”small”, 2=”medium” and 3=“large”.
Gestation length. Days from last reported mating/insemination to calving	
Method of measuring and collecting data	Farmer makes record of stillbirth, size and use of calf. He subjectively scores calving difficulties if the calving was observed. The farmer or advisor reports the events to the milk recording system.	
Time period for data inclusion	Stillbirth and gestation length since September 1978. Calving ease since September 1989. Calf size since 2002.	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	First parity only.	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Age at 1st calving 21 – 33 months.  Abortions, stillbirths more than 20 days prior to expected calving, and twins or triplets are discarded.   
Cow must be known. Sire of cow and calf must not be Jersey, old breed, Beef breed or milking breed other than RDC. Cow and calf must be less than 25 % Jersey+old breed+Beef breed.	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)		
Sire categories	One category, AI bulls of NRF.	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	Normal codes for sex of calf: 1=male, 2=female. Sex of calf may not be reported and is often the case for stillborn calves. Dummy sexcodes are used to reflect probability of male or female in such cases.
1.4936 for stillbirth=1 and 1.3464 for stillbirth=2. 1.5007 for calving ease=1, 1.3653 for calving ease=2 and 1.3169 for calving ease=3.	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	ST- AM with correlated direct and maternal effect.	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	(F) Regression on sex of calf.
(F) Type of stall. 3 levels.
(F) Age in months at calving. 12 levels.
(F) Quarter by year of calving. 126 levels.
(F) Calving month. 12 levels
(R) Herd by year of calving, 462.000 levels.	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	None	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Complete additive relationship with inbreeding included.. No genetic groups.	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	None	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	Variance components: Calving Ease, Stillbirth, Calfsize and Gestation Length
Herd*yr       direct add.   maternal add.    Cov dirXmat      residual        phenotypic
.0113413      .0123787       .0088057        -.000100384       .1612445      .1936699
.0002845      .0003783       .0004004          .000064656       .0347965     .0359244
.0156267      .0416779       .0115776          .005490299       .1767765     .2511491
.5544488      11.40959       1.686686          .3827587           7.943142     21.97663

Variance ratios: Calving Ease, Stillbirth, Calfsize and Gestation Length
Herd*yr       direct add.   maternal add.    Corr dirXmat      residual
.0613              .0679             .0483                -.0096               .8718
.0080              .0106             .0112                 .1661               .9813
.0667              .1770             .0492                 .2499               .7552
.0279              .5326             .0787                 .0873               .3990	
System validation	Correlation to previous estimates of EBV. Check on genetic trend.	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	RBV: Mean=100, SD=12
	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	Rolling average of dairy cows born 3 to 8 years previous to current evaluation. Updated at every evaluation.
Standard deviation based on AI-bulls born 5 to 12 years prior to July 1st 2019. Limits are updated every 2nd year. Next change July 1st 2021.	
Calculation of reliability	Interbull procedure of Mix99.	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Daughters in at least 10 different herds.
At least 70 daughters with phenotype (50 for imported AI-bulls).	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	3	
Use in total merit index4	TMI. Stillbirth accounts for 0.3 % direct and 0.3 % maternal effect.
Calving ease accounts for 0.6 % direct and 0.9 %  maternal effect.	
Anticipated changes in the near future		
Key reference on methodology applied	Svendsen, M. and I.M. A.-Ranberg (2000). Genetic evaluation for functional traits in Norway. Interbull Bulletin no. 25: 135-138.
MiX99 Development Team (2015). MiX99: A software package for solving large mixed model equations. Release VIII/2015. Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Jokioinen, Finland.  http://www.luke.fi/mix99.
Strandén, I., M. Lidauer, E.A. Mäntysaari and J. Pösö (2000). Calculation of Interbull weighting factors for the Finnish test day model. Interbull Bulletin no. 26: 78-79.
	
Key organisation: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	GENO SA, Storhamargata 44, N-2317 Hamar, Norway.
Phone: +47 95020600
Fax:     +47 62520610
E-mail: post@geno.no
Web site: www.geno.no	
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):	NORWAY	
Main trait group:	Calving Traits	
Breed(s):	Norwegian Dairy Cattle (NRF)	

Trait	h2	genetic
variance	official proof
standardisation formulaa	
Direct calving ease:
	.0678	.0123788	((eval-a) /b) * (-12) + 100	
Maternal calving ease:
	.0483	.0088057	((eval-a) /b) * (-12) + 100	

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.