Relationship Between Age at First Calving and 305-Day Milk Yield in Hungarian Holstein-Friesian Cows: Trends and Genetic Parameters

Age at first calving (AFC) and 305-day milk yield in the first lactation (MY) data of 18,545 Holstein-Friesian cows born between 2008 and 2018 in six herds were evaluated. The effects of some genetic and environmental factors, population genetic parameters, breeding value (BV), and phenotypic and genetic trends of AFC and MY traits were estimated. The GLM method (ANOVA Type III) and BLUP animal model were used for the estimations. One-way linear regression analysis was used for trend calculations. The adjusted overall mean value (±SE) of the AFC and MY traits was 25.19 ± 0.02 months and 10,287.14 ± 24.79 kg, respectively. The percentage proportion contribution of the different factors in the phenotype in the case of AFC was as follows: herd 94.41%, birth year of cow 3.26%, birth season of cow 1.39%, and sire 0.71%. For MY, the contribution was as follows: herd 89.17%, birth season of cow 5.38%, birth year of cow 4.09%, and sire 1.05%. The heritability of AFC and MY traits by two different models proved to be moderate (0.26 ± 0.02, 0.19 ± 0.01 and 0.30 ± 0.02, 0.34 ± 0.01, respectively). There were relatively small differences between the sires in the estimated BV for the traits AFC and MY. The phenotypic and genetic correlations between AFC and MY traits were weak (between -0.05 and -0.16). Based on the phenotypic trend calculation, AFC showed a decreasing direction (-0.12 months per year) and MY an increasing direction (+42.30 kg per year). However, the genetic trend was very slightly decreasing for AFC (-0.00 and -0.05 months per year) and slightly increasing for MY (+5.52 and +16.49 kg per year) over the period studied.