[en] Ind. of lactoferrin content, ind. of Na content, and lactose content were the three most correlated milk components with somatic cell score among available milk components predicted by mid-infrared spectrometry on 590,083 test-day records from Walloon Region of Belgium collected between 2007 and 2009. Mean daily heritabilities and mean genetic correlations of these four traits were estimated using Gibbs sampling methodology applied to a multi-trait random regression test-day model with a subset of these records. Mean daily heritabilities of ind. lactoferrin content (0.34), ind. Na content (0.37) and lactose content (0.42) were higher then SCS (0.16) and mean genetic correlations were moderate (from -0.18 to -0.73), showing that these traits could be used together to describe udder health in genetic evaluations instead of SCS alone when clinical mastitis data are not available.
Disciplines :
Genetics & genetic processes Animal production & animal husbandry
