INVESTIGATIONS ON FUNCTIONAL TRAITS IN SIMMENTAL - 3 - ECONOMIC WEIGHTS AT THE STATIONARY STATE OF A MARKOV-CHAIN

Milk production was modelled as a Markov chain with monetary returns. State-definition is due to two state-variables: survival (6 stages) an d parity (14 stages). Culled cows are grouped into one of the first fi ve survival-classes, according to the time-span between last calving a nd culling, cows not culled and calving again form the sixth survival- class. The difference between variable costs and returns at the statio nary state of the process was used as utility-function. Under differen t quota-prices economic weights were derived for a set of 25 traits, i ncluding ten different health traits, other functional traits and dair y traits. Results show, that dairy traits are of dominant importance ( measured as price for one genetic standard deviation), but some health -traits may reach a similar importance as first lactation fat yield, d epending on quota prices and size of genetic standard deviations.