T. Druet et al., Use of multitrait evaluation procedures to improve reliability of early prediction of survival, J DAIRY SCI, 82(9), 1999, pp. 2054-2054
Multitrait, across-country evaluation procedures were adapted to improve re
liability of survival breeding values by combining direct information with
yield and functional traits: milk persistency, somatic cell count, fertilit
y (male and female), and calving ease (direct and maternal). A set of bulls
was selected from the Austrian Simmental population based on mean original
reliabilities of at least 0.50 for yield traits or of at least 0.20 for fu
nctional traits. Only breeding values above these limits were retained. The
breeding values were deregressed, assuming that they were obtained by sing
le-trait, sire-maternal grandsire models. An expectation maximization restr
icted maximum likelihood algorithm based on the multitrait, across-country
evaluation equations was used to compute genetic correlations among all of
these traits. These equations were solved, and the reliabilities of the sol
utions were also estimated. Mean rank correlation between direct and combin
ed breeding values was 0.85 with values as low as 0.67 for the group of you
ngest bulls, Direct (original), indirect, and combined reliabilities were c
ompared to appreciate the impact of our procedures on improvement of reliab
ility of survival breeding values; This improvement, dependent on the level
of reliability of direct and indirect information, could be up to 0.24 for
animals with low direct reliability and high indirect reliability. For you
ng bulls born in 1992 without reliable direct survival information but with
already reliable information on yield and functional traits, mean reliabil
ity improvement was 0.13. For all bulls this value was still 0.06.