Abstract
Abstract. Two C programs were written on the basis of a bio-economic model for a wide range of cattle production systems. The model simulates the life-cycle production of a beef or dairy cow herd and the growth performance of offspring in rearing and fattening. The Markov chain approach was used to simulate herd dynamics. The program calculates the structure of the integrated production system in its stationary state, the economic efficiency of the system expressed as a function of biological traits of animals and of management and economic parameters, the number of discounted expressions for direct and maternal traits transmitted by breeding animals and the economic weights for 16 economically important traits for beef and 21 traits for dairy cattle. The program is freely available on request.
Highlights
In the framework of sustainable agriculture, beef cattle farming has become an important factor in a great part of Europe
Maintenance of rural landscape has been one factor favouring the maintenance of a wide spectrum of beef breeds, while improving carcass and meat quality of slaughter animals produced in dairy farming systems has been a second important utilisation of beef bulls
The simulation of growth and carcass composition as well as of feed requirement in beef and dairy cattle has been worked out well (KOOTS and GIBSON, 1998; TESS and KOLSTAD, 2000; KOENEN et al, 2000). These models hardly include the option to account the economic values of traits in beef bulls according to their utilisation in different breeding systems
Summary
In the framework of sustainable agriculture, beef cattle farming has become an important factor in a great part of Europe. A relatively high number of models for the estimation of economic values for traits in beef and dairy cattle have been recently published. In some of them the economic weights are calculated separately according to the utilisation of beef and cross-bred progeny (PHOCAS et al, 1998) and integrated to a general breeding goal.
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