Proposed changes to the EBI (November 2005)
The key changes, being proposed include the following;
SCC & mastitis incidence are traits that affect dairy farm profit. Mastitis results in increased costs at farm level (i.e., treatment costs and reduced milk yield), whilst SCC can result in both milk penalties (where bulk SCC counts are over 400,000 cells/ml) or milk bonuses (where bull SCC counts are less than 200,000 cells/ml). Recent work by ICBF has indicated that there are considerable differences between bulls in terms of udder health, with some bulls breeding cows with good udder health (i.e., less mastitis and lower SCC) and some bulls breeding cows with poor udder health (i.e., more mastitis and higher SCC). Examples of such bulls are given in Table 1.
From Table 1, one can see that a bull such as RUU is improving udder health with a positive economic value for udder health (+€6). It is proposed that this value would be added onto his current EBI value (€150), resulting in a new EBI including udder health of €156. Similarly, EBI's for some bulls will decrease, due to negative udder health values. In overall terms the range in differences in udder health for bulls on the Active bull list will be about €15, with an overall weighting in a new EBI of about 5%
Another trait that affects dairy farm profit is lameness. Again recent work by ICBF has indicated considerable genetic differences between bulls in % incidence lameness (based on daughter performance). Generally speaking, bulls with negative scores for locomotion score have higher % lame daughters. In overall terms the range in differences in udder health for bulls on the Active bull lists will be about €5, with an overall weighting in a new EBI of about 1%.
An increasing % of farmers are interested in having EBI information on other breeds, e.g., Jersey, Norwegian Red, Normande, Montbelliarde etc. ICBF have recently completed work on EBI values for each of these breeds based on both pure-bred and cross-bred performance. These results are being discussed with the dairy industry with a view to including information on other breeds in future EBI Reports & bull catalogues.
