Estimation of Repeatability of Calving Ease in Canadian Holsteins

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Abstract
Restricted maximum likelihood was used to estimate repeatabilities and heritabilities for calving ease from a data set of 636,972 Holstein parturitions obtained from the Quebec Dairy Herd Analysis Service. Subsets of the data, chosen to reflect different stages of cow maturity, were analyzed separately and compared. Initial least squares analyses were used to define the fixed effects to include in the model. The effects of herd-year-season, sex of calf, parity, and sex by parity interaction were significant in all subsets. Age and parity by age interaction were significant in subsets with primarily younger animals. Variances for sire of calf, cow, and residual effects were then estimated by REML. Repeatabilities ranged from 5.98 to 7.87% and heritabilities for calving ease as a direct effect ranged from 1.97 to 4.70%.