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Heritability and genetic correlations between rumination time and production traits in Holstein dairy cows during different lactation phases
Author(s) -
Moretti Riccardo,
Rezende Marcos Paulo Gonçalves,
Biffani Stefano,
Bozzi Riccardo
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of animal breeding and genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.689
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1439-0388
pISSN - 0931-2668
DOI - 10.1111/jbg.12346
Subject(s) - heritability , rumination , lactation , genetic correlation , biology , correlation , dairy cattle , zoology , milk production , genetic variation , genetics , pregnancy , mathematics , gene , cognition , geometry , neuroscience
So far, rumination has been used as a proxy for monitoring dairy cow health at farm level. However, investigating its genetic aspects as well as its correlation with other important productive traits may turn this management tool into a new informative selection criterion. However, scientific evidences on genetic correlation among rumination time (RT) and milk production and milk composition are still scarce. Therefore, the objective of this study was to estimate the heritability of RT across three lactation phases and its genetic correlation with milk production, milk composition and somatic cell count (SCC). Results of our study showed that heritability for RT was 0.34 and was constant across lactation. The mean genetic correlations between RT and milk production and composition traits were 0.07 (milk production), −0.07 (protein yield), −0.31 (fat yield), and −0.32 (fat/protein ratio). The mean genetic correlation between RT and the SCC was 0.05.