CDCB has announced the changes being implemented for the triannual evaluations on December 7, per the new post, Changes to CDCB Evaluation System. Genetic evaluations for Residual Feed Intake (RFI) will be improved using variance adjustments and a higher estimated heritability. The higher heritability increased the reliability of pedigree evaluations for RFI from 26.8% to 30.6% for sires that had at least 10% reliability. A further increase to 32.0% reliability resulted from including 998 new RFI records. Changes in Feed Saved will be less apparent than for RFI, because the Body Weight Composite PTAs are very stable. Additionally, thousands of records from several additional countries may be added in April 2022 – providing even more benefit. Other changes implemented for December include:
- Exclusion of 3k animals without genotyped progeny: Evaluations will be discontinued for a subset of about 37,000 animals that are genotyped exclusively with the Illumina Bovine3K BeadC and do not have genotyped progeny, as announced in the September CDCB Connection.
- Exclusion of animals with conflicting pedigree vs. genomic breed composition: Beginning with the November 2021 genomic evaluation, animals with Breed Base Representation (BBR) high enough to be included in the reference population (BBR >= 94) are excluded if the breeds of the parents do not match the animal’s breed.
- Haplotype calls for Ayrshire Curly Calf syndrome (AHC): While AHC has been included in CDCB’s genomic evaluation format since October, this December will be the first triannual evaluation including AHC.
- New processing of verified Interbull pedigrees: After the December 2021 evaluation, a new set of rules will be implemented to improve the acceptance of such verified pedigrees in the CDCB database.
Review the complete Changes to CDCB Evaluation System from CDCB and USDA AGIL scientists.