Breed for easy calvings

Calving Direct and Calving Maternal traits are used to describe the ease of birth for both the calf and its mother.

Calving Direct is a trait for a bull’s offspring’s genetic potential to be born easily and alive. Calving Maternal describes the bull’s daughter’s genetic potential for easy calvings and live-born calves. For both traits, the higher the EBV value – the easier the birth and the higher % of live-born calves.

Calving indexes are important for dairy businesses because difficult calvings can significantly affect a cow’s milk production in the long term. Even if you get your heifers and cows pregnant, if they can’t deliver live-born calves at the end of term, you also lose the value of the calf.

Calving traits

In the Nordic countries, we have collected data for the calving indexes for nearly 40 years, since 1985. We collect data for calf survival (the first 24 hours after birth), calving ease, and calf size. Records are available from the first five lactations.

But what does it mean in real life to use a bull with high breeding values for calving traits?

The VikingHolstein breed population average is 95.5% survival. A bull with an EBV 120 for ‘Calf survival, 1st lact.’ for Calving direct and Calving maternal will have an effect of +0.7% and +0.8%, respectively. This means that the bull's calves are 16% more likely to survive the birth, and his daughters are 18% more likely to deliver a live-born calf compared to the population averages.

For VikingRed, the EBV 120 breeding value for Calving traits means that calves are 15% more likely to survive and daughters are 13% more likely to deliver live-born calves. For VikingJersey, they are 11% for both calf survival under Calving direct and Calving maternal.

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