Relationship between milk composition and yield of milk, fat and protein in Red Danish cattle

Abstract

The relationships among five traits in dairy cattle (milk yield, fat yield, protein, fat % and protein %) were examined on the original and on a logarithmic scale. The data comprised the records on 5333 Red Danish cows tested at the Danish Progeny Testing Stations during the years 1960–66. None of the heritabilities or the correlations among the variates were altered appreciably by transformation. For the five traits heritability estimates were 0·56, 0·80, 0·65, 0·64 and 0·56, respectively. Phenotypic and genetic correlations among milk yield, fat yield and protein yield were all very high, about 0·95. The correlations between fat % and protein % were about 0·6. The coefficient of variation of a variate proved to be a good approximation of the standard deviation of the transformed variate even for milk, fat and protein yield with coefficients of variation of 17–18%. It was concluded that little is likely to be gained by using index selection for fat yield and protein yield. However, about 90% of the response obtainable by direct selection for fat or protein yield could be obtained merely by selection for milk yield. A large correlated response for protein yield could be obtained by selecting for fat yield.