B. Heringstad et al., Clinical mastitis in Norwegian cattle: Frequency, variance components, andgenetic correlation with protein yield, J DAIRY SCI, 82(6), 1999, pp. 1325-1330
Records of clinical mastitis in first lactation Norwegian Cattle from 1978
onward were analyzed. Variance components for clinical mastitis were estima
ted with a linear sire model using records of more than 1.2 million cows fr
om 2043 sires, resulting in heritability estimates of 0.035. Different stra
tegies for extracting data gave very similar results, and estimated heritab
ility for mastitis was the same with univariate and bivariate (with protein
yield) analyses, which indicates that selection bias caused by correlated
responses from other traits in the breeding goal is not a problem with this
data set. The estimated genetic correlation between clinical mastitis and
protein yield is 0.25.