VikingGenetics has more focus on improving udder health than any other company in the world and is the global leader when it comes to the genetic level for udder health.
Mastitis causes direct financial losses to dairy farmers no matter where in the world you farm. Mastitis reduces milk yield in current and future lactations, can eventually lead to a higher culling rate, incurs veterinary and medicine expenses plus extra labor costs. To avoid extra charges on the dairy farm, prevention of mastitis infection is the best approach. By breeding for higher Nordic Total Merit (NTM), you automatically get fewer mastitis cases in your herd. The udder health index has the second highest economic weighting in NTM; only production has a higher weighting.
In the Nordic countries, we use both the direct measure, clinical mastitis, and the indirect measures like conformation traits and SCC, where the latter is only an indicator of mastitis. Mastitis registrations come from veterinary and farmer records on clinical mastitis. The conformation trait information comes from the two traits fore udder attachment and udder depth, both being negatively correlated to udder health.
Choosing the right bull has a significant effect. In table 1, you can see the number of daughters with mastitis in relation to the bull’s index for mastitis resistance.
Table 1: Effect of bulls with different breeding values on an average daughter
|
Breeding value |
80 |
90 |
100 |
110 |
120 |
|
Mastitis % |
19% |
16% |
14% |
11% |
9% |
