Exploring milk loss and variability during environmental perturbations across lactation stages as resilience indicators in Holstein cattle

Ao Wang; Luiz F Brito; Hailiang Zhang; Rui Shi; Lei Zhu; Dengke Liu; Gang Guo; Yachun Wang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2022.1031557

Exploring milk loss and variability during environmental perturbations across lactation stages as resilience indicators in Holstein cattle

Front Genet. 2022 Dec 2:13:1031557. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2022.1031557. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Ao Wang¹, Luiz F Brito², Hailiang Zhang¹, Rui Shi¹, Lei Zhu¹, Dengke Liu³, Gang Guo⁴, Yachun Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction, Ministry of Agriculture of China, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
² Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States.
³ Hebei Sunlon Modern Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., Dingzhou, China.
⁴ Beijing Sunlon Livestock Development Co., Ltd., Beijing, China.

Abstract

Genetic selection for resilience is essential to improve the long-term sustainability of the dairy cattle industry, especially the ability of cows to maintain their level of production when exposed to environmental disturbances. Recording of daily milk yield provides an opportunity to develop resilience indicators based on milk losses and fluctuations in daily milk yield caused by environmental disturbances. In this context, our study aimed to explore milk loss traits and measures of variability in daily milk yield, including log-transformed standard deviation of milk deviations (Lnsd), lag-1 autocorrelation (Ra), and skewness of the deviations (Ske), as indicators of general resilience in dairy cows. The unperturbed dynamics of milk yield as well as milk loss were predicted using an iterative procedure of lactation curve modeling. Milk fluctuations were defined as a period of at least 10 successive days of negative deviations in which milk yield dropped at least once below 90% of the expected values. Genetic parameters of these indicators and their genetic correlation with economically important traits were estimated using single-trait and bivariate animal models and 8,935 lactations (after quality control) from 6,816 Chinese Holstein cows. In general, cows experienced an average of 3.73 environmental disturbances with a milk loss of 267 kg of milk per lactation. Each fluctuation lasted for 19.80 ± 11.46 days. Milk loss traits are heritable with heritability estimates ranging from 0.004 to 0.061. The heritabilities differed between Lnsd (0.135-0.250), Ra (0.008-0.058), and Ske (0.001-0.075), with the highest heritability estimate of 0.250 ± 0.020 for Lnsd when removing the first and last 10 days in milk in a lactation (Lnsd2). Based on moderate to high genetic correlations, lower Lnsd2 is associated with less milk losses, better reproductive performance, and lower disease incidence. These findings indicate that among the variables evaluated, Lnsd2 is the most promising indicator for breeding for improved resilience in Holstein cattle.

Keywords: cattle resilience; daily milk yield; dairy cattle; lactation curve; milk variability.