Test herds in dairy cattle breeding programmes 1st communication: General considerations

Conventional breeding programmes for dairy cattle generally are based on progeny testing of young bulls in the field, i.e. distributed across the population. Several aspects call for a consideration of alternatives to this procedure in the sense of tightening progeny testing schemes. Distributed progeny testing schemes impose a high financial burden for breeding organizations if recording costs have to be carried by the organizations only. The need for testing in an environment maximizing the additive genetic variance may also demand a restriction pertaining to only specific parts of the population. Developments in the field of biotechnology, especially breeding programmes based on the technology of cloning of animals will require nucleus and testing structures while marketing clones for the commercial population. Lastly, and most important, new developments in molecular genetics, especially genomic selection will create the strong need for highly accurate phenotyping and genotyping which is impossible to conduct across an entire population. Concluding, breeding schemes will require test herds in the future.

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