2013•Unpublished venueOpen access
Selection on feed intake or feed efficiency: A position paper from gDMI breeding goal discussions
R.F. Veerkamp, J.E. Pryce, D.M. Spurlock, D.P. Berry, M.P. Coffey, Peter Løvendahl, R. van der Linde, J Bryant, Giuseppina Migliore, Z. Wang, Marco Winters, N. Krattenmacher, Y. de Haas
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Abstract
The widespread use of genomic information in dairy cattle breeding programs has opened up the possibility to select for novel traits, especially for traits that are traditionally difficult to record in a progeny testing scheme. Feed intake and efficiency is such a difficult to measure trait. In February 2013, the co-authors discussed how information on DMI should be incorporated in the breeding decisions. The aim of this paper is to present the overall discussion and main positions taken by the group on four topics related to feed efficiency: i) breeding goal definition; ii) biological variation in feed utilisation; iii) optimal recording of feed intake and predictor traits; and iv) unwanted correlated responses and validation