Investigations on breeding plans for organic dairy cattle

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.