The Application of Recursive Mixed Models for Estimating Genetic and Phenotypic Relationships between Calving Difficulty and Lactation Curve Traits in Iranian Holsteins: A Comparison with Standard Mixed Models

In the present study, records on 22872 first-parity Holsteins collected from 131 herds by the Animal Breeding and Improvement Center of Iran from 1995 to 2014 were considered to estimate genetic and phenotypic relationships between calving difficulty (CD) and the lactation curve traits, including initial milk yield (Ap), ascending (Bp) and descending (Cp) slope of the lactation curves, peak milk yield (Ym), days to attain peak yield (Tm) and milk persistency (Pers) under recursive mixed models (RMMs) and standard mixed models (SMMs). Recursive mixed models (RMMs) were applied by fitting CD as a covariate for any of the studied lactation curve traits while considering genetic relationships between CD and these traits. The obtained results denoted a statistically significant non-zero magnitude of the causal relationships of CD with Ap and Bp, while the former influencing the latter. The causal effects of CD on Ap and were -0.351 kg and 0.005, respectively. Direct genetic correlations between CD and the studied traits under RMMs and standard mixed models (SMMs) were not statistically different from zero, except for the correlations of CD with Tm; indicating that genes associated with difficult births also increase peak days in milk. Comparison of both models by the deviance information criterion (DIC) demonstrated the plausibility of RMMs over SMMs for studying the relationships of CD with Ap and Bp while SMMs performed better for estimating the relationships of CD with Cp, Ym, Tm and Pers.