Random regression models (RRM) have recently been used not only in the analysis of milk traits such as milk, fat and protein yield, but also somatic cell score (SCS), lactose yield and milk urea nitrogen (MUN), and very seldom they have been applied to analyze milk dry matter (DM) yield. RRM have many advantages over lactation models: 1) they account more accurately for environmental factors affecting the performance of cows in each day in milk (DIM) throughout the lactation, 2) they allow ABSTRACT: The objective of this research was to examine heritabilities and genetic, phenotypic and permanent environmental relationships between milk dry matter (DM) and milk traits such as milk, fat, protein and lactose yields, milk urea nitrogen (MUN) and somatic cell score (SCS) in extended (to 395 days) lactations of Holstein cows from a big farm in Poland. The data set consisted of 78 059 test day records from the first, second and third lactations of 3 792 cows, daughters of 210 sires and 1 677 dams. Single-or two-trait random regression models were used with fixed effects of calving year, calving month, dry period and calving interval and random additive genetic and permanent environmental effects. The last two fixed effects were not included in the analysis of first lactation data. The highest values of heritabilities for all traits, except DM, were observed in the second lactation. First lactation heritabilities for all traits -except milk yield and SCS -were smaller than those in the third lactation. Lactose yield was highly heritable, with average h 2 equal to 0.25, 0.29 and 0.28 in lactations 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Heritability for DM was slightly lower than that for lactose (0.22, 0.26 and 0.28 for lactations 1, 2 and 3, respectively). In all lactations heritabilities for SCS were below 0.1. Genetic correlations between DM and milk yield (0.64-0.74) were lower than those between MUN and milk yield (0.67-0.79) as well as between lactose and milk yield (0.72-0.82). In general, DM was much more closely correlated with fat or protein yield (0.55-0.79) than with MUN or lactose (0.38-0.76). Only in the third lactation the correlation between DM and protein (0.72) was lower than between lactose and protein (0.76). For all lactations there were very high genetic correlations between DM and lactose (0.96-0.98) and high correlations between ) and between lactose and MUN (0.70-0.85). The results suggest that further research is needed, focused on DM and its relationship with other traits in larger populations.
the aim of the work was to analyze the genetic structure of the population of tatra shepherd dogs, registered in branches of polish Kennel club from tatra mountain region. data were pedigrees of 102 tatra shepherd dogs (33 males and 69 females) born between 1994 and 2011. inbreeding and relationship coefficients, as well as effective number of founders and ancestors, were calculated. These statistics give the picture of genetic diversity of the population. Average inbreeding coefficient was 7.17%, whereas average relationship coefficient was 18.20%. The number of inbred animals and the mean f X values steadily increased over time. Twenty-six of 80 inbred animals had inbreeding coefficients higher than 10%. The effective number of founders was relatively high in relation to the population size (the effective number of ancestors was four times lower) and both were similar to the results of studies of other authors on different dog breeds. the total contribution of only 4 ancestors was enough to explain 50% of the gene pool of the population. Therefore, mating of related animals should be avoided in order to prevent the further increase of inbreeding level, because almost all Polish and foreign Tatra Shepherd dogs living now originate from the population under study.
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