Trends in Heritability of Daily Milk Yield by Periods in Korean Cattle

Korean cattle breeders have shown interest in genetic improvement of milking ability because poor milking ability and short suckling period of Korean cattle is a hindrance to growth of calves. In this study, daily milk yields by period in Korean cattle were analyzed with an animal model. The milk yields were actually measured at sequential intervals from 1 to 4 months after calving: daily milk yields from delivery to 1 month (DMY1), from 1 to 2 months (DMY2), from 2 to 3 months (DMY3), and from 3 to 4 months (DMY4). Genetic variance estimates gradually increased by the periods while environmental variance estimates gradually decreased. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the heritability by periods: 0.02 for DMY1, 0.11 for DMY2, 0.16 for DMY3, and 0.42 for DMY4. In multi-trait analyses with daily milk yield and body weight of calf, genetic correlation estimates between milk yield and body weight were quite small (-0.08 to 0.02 for birth weight and -0.10 to 0.00 for weaning weight). The trends of the heritability estimated in this study showed that the genetic effects were more influential when the milking period was longer, suggesting genetic evaluations with daily milk yield collected at a longer period.