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Economic evaluation of breeding strategies in pastoral production systems to improve animal health and animal welfare (WEIDEKUH II)

Project


Project code: 2812NA035
Contract period: 01.08.2013 - 31.07.2016
Budget: 317,948 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research

WEIDEKUH II is designed based on existing infrastructure of the project WEIDEKUH I. Ex-isting infrastructure implies an available consortium of participating dairy cattle farmers, breeding organizations and scientific researchers organizing progeny testing of different Holstein Friesian genotypes (HF from New Zealand, HF and DSN from Germany) in pasture based systems. Limited resources of WEIDEKUH I only allow breed comparisons for rou-tinely measured traits, implying that currently there is a pronounced focus on production traits. However, organic breeding programs or breeding in organic production systems such as pasture based production systems have a strong emphasis on dairy cattle health and welfare, i.e. such traits which are not included in conventional dairy cattle breeding pro-grams and recording systems. Hence, WEIDEKUH II extends breed comparisons by includ-ing new functional phenotypes which reflect dairy cattle health and welfare. Data recording for a wide variety of phenotypes in combination with a comprehensive economic evaluation (i.e. studies on revenues and expenses) of dairy cattle farming in pasture based systems furthermore allows a) studies on genotype by environment interactions, b) derivation of eco-nomic weights for production and functional traits in pasture based systems c) development of an overall breeding goal for pasture based systems and ranking sires accordingly, and d) identifying criteria for successful dairy cattle farming in pasture based systems based on economic within-farm evaluation. WEIDEKUH II is a prerequisite for implementing and ex-tending pasture based systems in Germany. These goals can be achieved based on the generated data by suggesting the most promising breed, by identifying most valuable sires according to an economic overall breeding goal, and by setting up within-farm strategies for maximizing economic gain.

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