Three methods of sire evaluation were compared empirically--herdmate comparison, least squares, and maximum likelihood. Michigan Dairy Herd Improvement Association Holstein data representing 10,620 first lactation records and 1,003 herd-year groups were analyzed. Forty individual bulls representing three artificial insemination units were evaluated. The rank correlations among herdmate comparis...

Simultaneous genetic evaluations for bulls and cows obtained by mixed model procedures with an animal model incorporating all numerator relationships for artificially sired Holstein cows in northeastern United States were compared with separate (Northeast) mixed model evaluations of cows and sires for predicting genetic evaluations of progeny from dam, sire, and maternal grandsire evaluations. ...

Fifteen progeny of two Polled Hereford sires were fed endophyte-infected tall fescue seed (E+) to investigate variability in susceptibility to fescue toxicosis. One sire, bred in Missouri, was reputed to produce calves that were resistant to fescue toxicosis. The Control sire, from Virginia, had unknown merit for susceptibility. There were two phases in which E+ was included in the diet (2 and ...

Steer progeny (n = 80) produced by mating British crossbred females to one of three terminal (Charolais) sires or one of five maternal (Angus or Red Angus-Composite) sires were evaluated from birth to harvest to compare the effects of sire type (terminal vs. maternal) on growth performance, carcass characteristics, and net return per head. Steers sired by terminal bulls were heavier (P < 0.05) ...

Milk yield, fat yield, and fat percentage during the first three lactations were studied using New York Holsteins that were milked twice daily over a 305-d, mature equivalent lactation. Those data were used to estimate variances from direct and maternal genetic effects, cytoplasmic effects, sire by herd interaction, and cow permanent environmental effects. Cytoplasmic line was traced to the las...

Accurate demographic knowledge of the equine population is needed to assess and model health events. France one few European countries with an operational centralized database (SIRE) recording individual data on all declared equines living in their owners keepers. Our study aimed SIRE quality concerning updating information by keepers a view its improvement use surveillance research. Two online...

A statistic to measure the level of connectedness achieved among flocks would help producers to assess the risk of comparing EBV of animals from different flocks. The objectives of this research were to evaluate the pattern of change over time in selected connectedness measures and to determine how effectively these measures quantify the level of risk due to potential bias in EBV comparisons ac...

Beef sire selection decisions have a major impact on future calf crops and ultimately on profitability. Using available selection tools can help make better bull buying choices. A critical place to start when beginning the herd sire selection decision process is to evaluate the cow herd(s) that the sires will service. From these herd assessments, profiles of desirable herd sires can be develope...

1.0 Introduction Over the past decade, members of the Information Retrieval Lab have designed, developed, and deployed a variety of information retrieval systems. A central theme for all of our systems was the integration of structured data and text. One of our more recent efforts, SIRE, a Scalable Information Retrieval Engine [Grossman97, Grossman98, Lundquist99] is the focus of this paper. Fo...