1. 2006 GEORGE R. WIGGANS wiggans@aipl.arsusda.gov Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory Agricultural Research Service, USDA Beltsville, Maryland 20705-2350, USA Update on Current AIPL Research

2. Update on Current AIPL Research (2) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Senior research staff

3. Update on Current AIPL Research (3) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Proposal to include crossbreds ●Include all breeds in a single evaluation ●Report evaluations on individual breed bases ●Could start in November 2006

4. Update on Current AIPL Research (4) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Reasons to include crossbreds ●Indication of a bull’s value when used for a dam of different breed ●Increased reliability of bull evaluation with addition of crossbred daughters ●Producer expectations that crossbreds improve fertility and longevity

5. Update on Current AIPL Research (5) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Revised productive life ●DIM > 305 credited –Differential weighting by DIM gives some advantage to cows that calve more often ●Heritability reduced from 8.5 to 8% ●Influence of fertility on productive life reduced ●Female fertility is adequately reported in evaluations for daughter pregnancy rate ●Implementation planned for August 2006 along with revised net merit index

6. Update on Current AIPL Research (6) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Productive life credits 2 0 3451 Years 20 140 40 60 80 100 120 0 Credit (%) 321

7. Update on Current AIPL Research (7) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Productive life credits – 2006 2 0 3451 Years 20 140 40 60 80 100 120 0 Credit (%) 321

8. Update on Current AIPL Research (8) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Evaluating male fertility ●Calculation of ERCR to be transferred from DRMS to AIPL in May ●Data from DRMS, AgSource, and Minnesota ●Model and data sources same as for current ERCR ●Continued research on possible improvements

9. Update on Current AIPL Research (9) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Evaluation for stillbirth ●Stillbirth – born dead or died within 48 hours ●Reported for about half of calving-ease records ●AI organizations pay to support data collection and analysis of calving ease ●Evaluation and reporting similar to calving ease ●To be included in net merit index ●Implementation planned for August 2006

10. Update on Current AIPL Research (10) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Abnormal distribution of calving-ease scores ●Scored 1 (no problem) to 5 (extreme difficulty) ●Most common score expected to be 1 ●Bulls with large changes usually have abnormal distributions ●Scores combined with 1 if score 2 or 3 most common ●Additional herd-years excluded if distribution is unlikely

11. Update on Current AIPL Research (11) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Evaluation for milking speed ●Brown Swiss provided milking-speed data scored 1 (slowest) to 8 (fastest) starting in 2004 ●Heritability of 22% ●Implementation planned for May 2006 ●Some AI organizations may provide data for other breeds

12. Update on Current AIPL Research (12) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Low-cost parentage verification ●New DNA test (SNP) may make parentage validation cheap enough to be widespread ●Develop a database and adapt software to check parentage and suggest alternatives for invalid IDs ●Determine rate of parentage errors in a sample of herds

13. Update on Current AIPL Research (13) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Health data ●Add evaluations for more fitness traits ●Evaluations for disease resistance could assist in prediction of productive life ●Common codes for health events based on research data have been developed ●Owners to retain control over access to and use of health data

14. Update on Current AIPL Research (14) G. R. Wiggans 2006 Summary ●New traits –Stillbirth –Milking speed –Bull fertility (transferred from DRMS) ●Changes to evaluations –All-breed evaluation –Variable credits by DIM for productive life ●Investigation of use of DNA for parentage verification