Economic values of traits for Slovakian Pied cattle under different marketing strategies

Abstract

Economic values of 15 production and functional traits for Slovakian Pied cattle were calculated under different marketing strategies. The traits were as follows: birth weight of calves, daily gain of calves in fattening, mature weight of cows, weight of calves at 120, 210 (weaning weight) and 365 days (yearling weight) of age, dressing percentage, mean class for fleshiness and fat covering, conception rate of heifers and cows, losses of calves at calving and from 48 hours to weaning, lifetime of cows and mean class for calving performance. A purebred cow-calf pasture system producing its own female and male replacement was assumed for all strategies. The following marketing strategies for surplus weaned female and male calves were taken into account: (A) export of all surplus calves, (B) intensive fattening of all surplus calves, (C) rearing and selling of all surplus non-pregnant (1) or pregnant (2) breeding heifers and fattening or export of surplus male calves. All calculations were carried out with the computer program Ecoweight. The relative economic importance of traits was calculated multiplying the economic values by the genetic standard deviations of the traits. The lifetime of cows was the most important trait when applying export or fattening of all calves or when selling pregnant breeding heifers, whereas the yearling weight was even more important for the strategy with selling non-pregnant heifers. The second most important trait was weaning weight in strategy A, yearling weight in strategy B and lifetime of cows in marketing strategy C. Carcass conformation traits had the lowest economic importance in all calculations.