Investigations on breeding plans for organic dairy cattle

B Harder,W Junge,J Bennewitz,E Kalm

doi:10.5194/aab-47-129-2004

Abstract

Abstract. facilities in Germany, different alternative breeding plans for organic cattle breeding were developed using the computer program ZPLAN. First the impact of the population size on the parameters of success was analysed. A conventional cattle breeding program was compared with an organic breeding program. The results indicate that the selection response increased with increasing population size due to improved selection of bull sires. The EU Regulations on organic farming say that the proportion of artificial insemination has to be reduced as much as possible. According to this, the influence of different proportions of artificial insemination on the monetary genetic gain was investigated. The reduction of artificial insemination below 50% led to high losses in the discounted profit. The influence of higher economic weights for functional traits on the natural selection response was investigated. An increase of the economic weights by 50% led to tolerable decreases in the natural selection response of production traits with regard to a more ecological orientated breeding goal. The effect of the variation of the test capacity and the number of test bulls on the monetary genetic gain was analysed. The optimum for the monetary genetic gain was located at a test capacity of 50%, 30 test bulls and 99 daughters per test bull.

Highlights

In Germany the proportion of ecological managed milk-farms is about 2,5% (STATISTISCHES BUNDESAMT, 2002) of all milk-farms
General conditions for HARDER et al.: Investigations on breeding plans for organic dairy cattle animal breeding in organic farming are defined by the EU Regulations on organic farming (REGULATION No 1804, 1999)
ZPLAN enables to evaluate different breeding plans in any livestock species and optimise them according to several criteria, such as the genetic gain for the breeding objective, natural selection response for single traits, and return on investment adjusted for costs

Summary

Introduction

In Germany the proportion of ecological managed milk-farms is about 2,5% (STATISTISCHES BUNDESAMT, 2002) of all milk-farms. General conditions for HARDER et al.: Investigations on breeding plans for organic dairy cattle animal breeding in organic farming are defined by the EU Regulations on organic farming (REGULATION No 1804, 1999). According to these regulations a decrease of the proportion of artificial insemination is desired. The breeding goal in organic cattle breeding should put more weight on the functional traits and by doing this accepts a lower genetic gain for the production traits. The impact of different proportions of artificial insemination, different economic weights for the functional traits, and different test capacities on the criteria monetary genetic gain, natural selection response, and discounted profit was investigated

Objectives

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Results

Conclusion