A move to monthly genetic updates, instead of three times per year, is increasing the timeliness of data for Canadian dairy farmers.
WHY IT MATTERS: The significant increase in available genetic data will help the entire Canadian sector provide more timely breeding decision feedback.
Lactanet moved to monthly reporting this fall, highlighting the project during its recent Open Industry Session.
During the Oct. 22 event, Senior Geneticist Pete Sullivan said changes in genetic ratings, based on information received up to Sept. 19, were published on Oct. 7 for more than 350,000 dairy cows. This compares to approximately 80,000 changes that would have been updated monthly under the previous protocol, which only provided monthly updates for females with production recorded under Lactanet’s supervised testing protocol.
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Lactanet’s database currently includes over 35 million animals, mostly females. Ratings for genetic factors related to production and profitability have been widely published three times per year: April, August and December. Many of those on supervised Lactanet testing, meanwhile, have seen monthly updates provided for genetic herd inventories or genetic mating programs.
The recent initiative, with Phase 1 introduced effective Oct. 7, sees updates based on both supervised testing and some herd management software programs published not just for producers and their service providers, but also for the entire dairy genetics sector. Sullivan noted in his Open Industry Session presentation that the project provides improved accuracy when selecting for mating sires, more timely identification of cows that have moved up in their rankings based on their own production values, and more timely updates for cows that are closely related to cows that saw their production and profitability ratings increase.
Phase 2, scheduled to be introduced in December, would see Lactanet’s monthly cow rankings use one singular evaluation of all enrolled cows’ potential for production and Lifetime Profitability Index (LPI).
This compares to the current two separate genetic evaluations — “official” or “management” — depending on whether the cow’s production was recorded through a “publishable” format (herd management software or by supervised testing) or by the farmer themself through unsupervised monthly milk testing.
Currently, cows with a management index are given parent average ratings for Lactanet and breed association publications. As such, they don’t qualify for inclusion in lists of top-ranked females based on LPI or other profitability parameters.
“The fact that some cows and heifers have had different genetic evaluations available depending on the degree of supervised testing has been a longstanding source of confusion,” Lactanet staffers Cindy Jaton and Hannah Sweett wrote in a recent article about the switch to monthly updates, posted by the organization.
Sullivan said the impact of including cows on unsupervised testing will be small. “We expect that top cow lists, as a result (of implementing Phase 2), will include a few cows with unsupervised recording.”
He showed results of an analysis conducted by Lactanet about the possible Phase 2 effects. For LPI ratings, that analysis suggested the highest-ranking owner-sampled Holstein in Canada would rank 141st, while there would be three owner-sampled Jerseys in the top 100 list.
