Genetic and permanent environmental variations in daily milk yield and milk flow rates in Hungarian Holstein Friesian

Abstract

Random regression animal model was applied for analyzing the relationships between test-day milk yields (DY), and milk flow rate (FR). The current study involved 169,491 sample test-day records of Hungarian Holstein- Friesian cows. A quadratic random regression was applied for declaring additive genetic variances in all studied traits during biweekly observations across the first three parities. Estimates of heritability for test-day milk yield and udder milk flow rates ranged from 0.09 to 0.58 and from 0.02 to 0.50, respectively through 42 milk-weeks (Wk). The highest heritability estimates occurred during the end of trajectory for both traits. In general DY tended to be more heritable than FR across lactation except during the first few weeks of lactation. Performance of DY was less affected by environmental variation than FR, while both values were moderate to high (0.63 to 0.75). Correlations among measurements showed that additive correlations (Ra) of 4Wk FR with the reminder part of lactation were high during early and late lactation. Also 24Wk FR was more genetically correlated with next measures and reached Ra = 0.94. Whereas 42Wk FR was high additively correlated with other biweekly measurements and ranged from 0.53 to 0.99. Performance of early and late DY was negative additively correlated and ranged from -0.03 to -0.53. Heritability of DY within levels of FR ranged from 0.09 to 0.33 within very slow and medium milk flow, respectively. Correlations among both traits increased linearly toward lactation end. DY during 24 Week and 42 Week of lactation accounted the highest additive correlations with FR across lactation. Estimated breeding values for DY and FR increased in different rates with progressing lactation. These results may indicate that individual selection results would be favorably achieved during the late part of lactation. More details about estimates of breeding values, estimates of permanent environmental and additive genetic correlations for all traits were tabulated.