Dairy farm profitability is influenced by the production and non-production traits of the cows. In New Zealand (NZ), cows in Livestock Improvement’s Sire Proving Scheme (SPS) herds are measured for 17 nonproduction traits known as traits other than production (TOP). Four of these traits are scored by the farmer and are considered to be management traits. The remaining 13 traits are scored by in...

OBJECTIVE The existing methods for identifying multiple rare variants underlying complex diseases in family samples are underpowered. Therefore, we aim to develop a new set-based method for an association study of dichotomous traits in family samples. METHODS We introduce a framework for testing the association of genetic variants with diseases in family samples based on a generalized linear ...

Genetic and phenotypic parameters for body condition score (BCS), days to first service (DFS), non-return rate (NRR), somatic cell score (SCS), and 305-day milk, fat and protein yields were estimated, using 38930 multiple lactation records of cows across 1830 herds. The cows were daughters of 243 different sires. Singleand multi-trait repeatability animal models were used to estimate parameters...

The impact of polymorphism of the diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT1), butyrophilin (BTN1A1), oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor (OLR1), and signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) genes on milk production and reproduction traits in 419 Czech Fleckvieh cows was examined using polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism. The loci DGAT1 and ...

Melanocortin-3 receptor (MC3R) plays an important role in the central control of energy homeostasis, and several functional polymorphisms of this gene have been detected. We have studied MC3R as a candidate gene responsible for variation in economically important traits in chicken. To determine the association between MC3R polymorphism and phenotypic variation, a total of 190 individuals from b...

Two of the most important broad classifications of phenotypes for successful dairy production are milk yield and fertility. The nature of the relationship between milk production and reproductive performance of dairy cows is uncertain due to conflicting results reported in many studies. A common deficiency in many such studies is an underappreciation of the dual dimension of the production-repr...