THE FUTURE OF BODY
SIZE TRAITS
Individual herds may warrant more concern about stature, especially if cows aren’t
fitting in existing stalls or parlours. In terms
of breed goals, stature should be considered
for corrective mating rather than striving
for continued genetic and-or phenotypic
increases. Due to stature’s correlation with
other important traits, such as mammary system, it will likely continue to slowly
increase over time. In the future, you can
expect stature will evolve to reflect economically important traits related to cow size,
such as feed efficiency and methane emissions, which are expected to be available for
selection in the next few years.
LYNSAY BEAVERS
Average genetic index for stature
data used to calculate genetic evaluations
are also not the same. Finally, on a more
technical level, models used to calculate
genetic evaluations for the traits listed in
the tables vary between countries, influencing correlations.
Average stature at 26 months of age (cm)
FIGURE 1 Phenotypic and genetic trait for stature in Canadian Holsteins.
Year of birth
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