Frequency and heritability of supernumerary teats in German Holsteins

The incidence of supernumerary teats was investigated on 818 German Holstei n calves from 28 bulls, 342 of them were male and 476 female. All calves we re inspected at an age of 1 to 4 weeks. The average frequency was 15.3%, wi th 7.8% in male calves and 20.6% in female calves. The difference between s exes was highly significant (p < 0.0001). A Bayesian approach was used to e stimate the heritability of the occurrence of supernumerary teats with a th reshold model. The posterior mean for the heritability was 0.09 with standa rd error 0.08.