Heifer Livability Genetic Evaluations Coming in December

The Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding has announced that a heifer livability (HL) genetic evaluation will be released for Holstein and Jersey sires with the December sire evaluations.

The trait will be included in the Net Merit index when it is updated next year. Heifer livability will get 1% emphasis in the new Net Merit index.

HL is the culmination of more than a decade of work recording calf survival rates for calves between 2 days of age and 18 months. It is based on 3.4 million heifer records of all breeds with birth dates between 2009 and 2016. During that period, the number of reported heifer deaths was 135,000, or 4%, says Mahesh Neupane, a postdoctoral research association with USDA’s Animal Genomic Improvement Laboratory.

Genomic transmitting abilities (GPTA) in Holsteins range from -1.6% to +1.6%. GPTAs for Jerseys range from -.05% to +0.5%, says Neupane. The reliabilities for HL average 46% of Holsteins and 30% for Jerseys.

“Heifer Livability had a favorable genetic trend in recent years, likely because of selection for correlated traits,” says Neupane. The correlation of HL is 0.44 with productive life, 0.34 to 0.36 with yield traits, and 0.36 with early first calving on proven Holstein bulls.

“By encouraging more recording of calf mortality (in herd records), the reliabilities of evaluations can increase significantly,” says Neupane.

To read more on the heifer livability genetic evaluation, click here.