THE KEY ELEMENTS FOR GENETIC RESPONSE IN FINNISH DAIRY-CATTLE BREEDING

This paper reviews some key elements of Finnish animal breeding resear ch contributing to the Finnish dairy cattle breeding programme and dis cusses the possibilities and problems in collecting data for genetic e valuation, prediction of breeding values both within and across countr ies, estimation of the economic value of important traits, and selecti on of bulls and cows. Economic values are calculated for fertility, ud der health and production traits when one genetic standard deviation u nit (gen. sd.) is changed in each trait independently and the financia l returns from selection response in the Finnish dairy cattle breeding programme are estimated. The following components were used to calcul ate the economic value of mastitis treatments: 1) cost of mastitis inc luding discarded milk and treatment costs, 2) reduction in milk price due to higher somatic cell count, 3) replacement costs and 4) lower pr oduction level of the herd due to involuntary culling of cows because of udder problems. A high somatic cell count lowers the price of milk and eventually leads to involuntary culling. For treatments for fertil ity disorders the following costs were included: 1) treatment costs 2) higher replacement costs and 3) decreased milk production in the herd . Days open included the following costs: 1) extra insemination, 2) re duced annual milk yield and 3) fewer calves born. Animal breeding was found to be a very cost effective investment, yielding returns of FIM 876.9 per cow from one round of selection when the gene flow was follo wed for over 25 years in the Finnish dairy cattle breeding programme.