DSD 4.6 | Accounting for accelerated genetic improvement

Producers are becoming increasingly willing to make strides in the herd’s genetic progress through using embryo transfer (ET). We’ve seen a 12% increase in this management practice. Dr. Asha Miles, a Research Geneticist from USDA, talks with us about the sire evaluation program and specifically about the impact of on farm reporting of embryo transfer on the data set.

Dr. Miles describes a dataset, updated 3x/year, available to all - accessible through the US Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding portal. This dataset can help producers unlock answers to questions about ideal sires for the herd. She recommends (1) the queries tab if you’re looking for a specific animal who has been genotyped and (2) Top Animal Listing where you can identify the ideal sire on specific indexes or traits.  

These findings were published in the Journal of Dairy Science article titled, “Improving national fertility evaluations by accounting for the rapid rise of embryo transfer in US dairy cattle.” Open access, available for download.

Topics of discussion

2:34       Greater than 90 million data points, verification of reproductive performance and collection of data 3:43       Overview of trends in the industry 4:04       Figure 1: Embryo Transfer – recent changes (Figure available on page 5) 6:09        Why has ET increased so much over the past 2 years?   8:14        Sire conception data – identifying / addressing unreported ET implant in dataset to improve genetic        evaluations through an edit, to limit bias.   10:28     Talk about Young sires – how can producers be sure that they are using reliable sires 11:55  Some of the bulls with the biggest change in PTAs with our edits were Young Bulls 14:37  How can dairy producers better report data to ensure they are captured 16:44 Transfer of data from herd software   17:44  Sires of the next generation (Figure 6 available on page 10) 18:38  US Council of Dairy Cattle Breeding (USCDCB)– where can they find and what should producers be looking for? 20:10 Net Merit – economic index – Lifetime profit potential 21:11 Personalizing matings 22:44 Reach out – ask for help if you want to advance your herd 24:13 If you have research ideas for USDA reach out

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https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(23)00286-2/pdf