The Generation Game
In New Zealand there are nearly 5 million dairy cows, the vast majority of which are grazed outdoors all the time. These cows have historically had high rates of milk recording, 70-80%, providing a rich dataset that our scientists and farmers can use to genetically improve the New Zealand national herd and help our dairy farmers across Ireland.
Improved milking efficiency, greater cow robustness, and better on-farm profitability are results of genetic gain, which contributes approximately $400 million to the New Zealand dairy economy every year.
Genetic gain is the result of a mathematical equation:
Modern genomic technologies allow even faster rates of gain. Here is why:
The goal with genomic selection is to increase the rate of genetic improvement in dairy animals, mainly by narrowing the five-year gap in the generation interval that occurs when using daughter proofs. Genomic evaluation allows scientists to evaluate a bull’s genetic merit with more accuracy at a younger age.
LIC has invested heavily over the last three decades to improve the accuracy of its animal evaluation system, with improved data providing better predictions on breeding worth for our farmers. The result of this scientific research is LIC’s Single Step Animal Model (SSAM), which combines ancestry, phenotypic and genomic information all in one step to produce an LIC genomic BW (gBW).
Incorporating genomic information in animal evaluations, both for daughter proven and genomic bulls, provides benefits to farmers, such as access to elite genomic sires and better breeding value estimations for slowly expressed traits such as longevity.
