Dairy cattle breeding professionals convened in Baltimore, Maryland, for an open meeting of the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding on Aug. 5, where they heard updates and learned of new developments among the organization.

CDCB introduces new CEO
A new chief executive officer for the CDCB will provide leadership for the future of the council. Dr. Joao Durr is most recently known for his work as executive director of the Interbull Centre.

Born and raised in Brazil, Durr attained an agriculture degree in his home country and continued on to graduate studies at the McGill University in Canada in the area of animal breeding and genetics. Durr brings along with him a wealth of managerial experience in milk recording database development and genetic evaluation. (Click here to read more about Durr.)

Reflection on genetic advancements
Dr. Ole Meland, chairman of the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding, gave an update on the structure of the council, past activities and future plans. Meland praised genetic advancement as one of the reasons milk yield has increased fivefold in the past 70 years. In 1940, nearly 25 million cows averaged 13,228 pounds of milk per cow, while today we see about nine million cows producing closer to 22,046 pounds per cow.

Dairy cattle trait evaluation has been a driving force in determining the overall value of an animal’s genetic makeup. Over time, traits have been added to the index. In the 1920s, milk and fat yields were some of the first traits to be evaluated. Later on in the 1970s, type and protein yield came onto the scene.

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During the 1990s, productive life and somatic cell score were introduced. The turn of the 21st century brought on calving ease, daughter pregnancy rate, stillbirth rate, sire conception rate and cow and heifer conception rates. With a host of traits already being taken into consideration, Meland raises the question of what traits will be looked at down the road.

Genomics and genetic progress
Genetic advancement has increased in the relatively new era of genomics. This exciting advancement and breeding tool has been in use since January of 2009 and has seen a greater rate of genetic progress and reduction of generation interval.

The U.S. is the gold standard in the world when it comes to genomics. Key concepts driving the CDCB are to work for the broader good of the dairy industry while recognizing commercial and competitive opportunities.

More than 244,000 animal genotypes were added to the CDCB database during the past year. Approximately 82 percent of those genotypes were females. Since January of 2009, CDCB has collected nearly 634,000 genotypes.

More than 128,000 bull genotypes are in the CDCB database, and only one out of every 20 young bulls tested are selected for A.I. with about 1,300 going to stud in the U.S. each year. This in itself has resulted in genetic progress.

Although many positives can be recognized because of the use of genomic data, genomics will require a massive amount of phenotypic data to re-estimate SNP effects each generation. The good news is: Much of this data is in existence on farm computers.

Devising a strategy to pool this information into the CDCB database will be important for use in genetic evaluations on new economically important traits and management benchmarks. More efforts continue to be turned to growing the database in terms of amount of data, quality of data and data for emerging traits.

Scientists at the USDA focused on dairy cattle research will now be known as the Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory (AGIL) group. This is a government-industry relationship that is sustainable and will best serve the dairy producers of the U.S. well into the future. John Cole, AGIL research geneticist, presented upon change coming to the way net merit (NM$) is calculated.

Yield will have a greater impact on NM$, while productive life and fertility will have less of an effect on the scoring. Cole noted that the finalized calculations and adjustments will be accessible sometime in September. These changes will officially take effect during the December 2014 proofs and at the five-year base change.

The CDCB also announced it is making available to the industry a genomic inbreeding matrix that will include all genomic-tested females and males.

Consideration of weekly genomic reports was a notable piece of information announced during the meeting. No time has been set to enact this change due to the fact discussion is ongoing among the CDCB board.

The CDCB plans to continue meeting on an annual basis to continue discussions in the same fashion as the open forum held this year in Maryland. PD

Devan Funk is the vice president of genetics at Accelerated Genetics. Ethan Giebel is a marketing communications intern with Accelerated Genetics. The CDCB was organized in 1986 and is a board composed of 12 voting members representing the following groups: National Association of Animal Breeders, National Dairy Herd Information Association, Dairy Records Processing Center, Purebred Dairy Cattle Association and two non-voting members representing allied industry partners.