Kumud Dhakal

Complex relationships exist between udder susceptibility to mastitis and milk production traits. Identifying causal association between these traits could help to disentangle these complex relationships. The main objective of the study was to use producer-recorded health data to examine the causal relationship between mastitis events, milk yield and lactation persistency. A total of 48,058 first lactation cows, daughters of 2213 Holstein bulls and raised across 207 herds were analyzed using structural equation models. Traits included in the dataset were mastitis events and average test day milk yields recorded in three different periods: period 1 (5–60 DIM), period 2 (61–120 DIM) and period 3 (121–180 DIM). In addition, lactation persistency was also included. A subset including 28,867 daughters of 1809 Holstein sires having both first and second lactation across 201 herds was further investigated. In these datasets, mastitis events were defined on a lactation basis as binary trait; either a cow was assigned a score of 1 (had a mastitis event in that lactation) or a score of 0 (healthy) for that particular lactation, regardless of the time of occurrence. Total milk yield from first and second lactation were also included in the analyses. We estimated negative structural coefficient (À 0.032) between clinical mastitis and test day milk production in early lactation period suggesting that mastitis results in a direct decline in milk production in early lactation. We nonetheless elicited little impact of mastitis on test day milk production of mid and late lactation periods, and on milk yield lactation persistency. Likewise the positive estimate of the structural coefficient (0.123) from mastitis event in first lactation to second lactation suggests an increased risk of mastitis in second lactation if a case of mastitis occurs in the primiparous cow. Heritability estimates obtained from the structural equation models were low for mastitis (ranged 0.04 to 0.07), and negative genetic correlations were found between mastitis events and milk yield. The study illustrates how mastitis events and production are causally linked. Through the use of structural equation models we elicited the causal effect among mastitis and production traits that evolve over the course of cow life.

Hoof lesions contributing to lameness are crucial economic factors that hinder the profitability of dairy enterprises. Producer-recorded hoof lesions data of US Holsteins were categorized into infectious (abscess, digital and interdigital dermatitis, heel erosion, and foot rot) and noninfectious (korn, corkscrew, sole and toe ulcer, sole hemorrhage, white line separation, fissures , thin soles, and upper leg lesions) categories of hoof lesions. Pedigree-and genomic-based univariate analyses were conducted to estimate the variance components and heritability of infectious and nonin-fectious hoof lesions. A threshold sire model was used with fixed effects of year-seasons and random effects of herd and sire. For genomic-based analysis, a single-step procedure was conducted, incorporating H matrix to estimate genomic variance components and heritability for hoof lesions. The pedigree-based analysis produced heritability estimates of 0.11 (±0.05) for infectious hoof lesions and 0.08 (±0.05) for noninfectious hoof lesions. The single-step genomic analysis produced heritability estimates of 0.14 (±0.06) for infectious hoof lesions and 0.12 (±0.08) for noninfectious hoof lesions. Approximated genetic correlations between hoof lesion traits and hoof type traits along with productive life and net merit were all low and ranged between −0.25 and 0.14. Sire reliabilities increased, on average, by 0.24 and 0.18 for infectious and noninfectious hoof lesions, respectively , with incorporation of genomic data.