Genomic evaluation of late-term abortion in cows recorded through Dairy Herd Improvement test plans

Abstract

Late-term abortions cause significant economic loss and are of great concern for dairy herds. Late-term abortions >152 d and <251 d of gestation that terminate a lactation or initiate a new lactation have long been recorded by Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI). For 24.8 million DHI lactations, the average recorded incidence of late-term abortions across all years (2001-2018) was 1.2%. However, the 1.3% incidence of abortions reported in 2012 has declined to <1.0% incidence since 2015. Small adjustments were applied to the 82 million daughter pregnancy rate (DPR), 29 million cow conception rate (CCR), and 9 million heifer conception rate (HCR) records to account for late-term abortions more accurately. Fertility credits for CCR and HCR were changed to treat the last breeding as a failure instead of success if the next calving was coded as a late-term abortion. Similarly, when computing DPR, days open is now set to the maximum value of 250 instead of the reported days open if the next reported calving is an abortion. The test of these changes showed very small changes in standard deviation and high correlations (0.997) of adjusted predicted transmitting abilities (PTA) with official PTA from about 20,000 Holstein bulls born since 2000 with >50% reliability. For late-term abortion as a trait, estimated heritability was only 0.001 and PTA had a standard deviation of only 0.1% for recent sires with high reliability (>75%). Young animal genomic PTA have near 50% reliability but range only from -0.5 to +0.4 because of the low incidence and heritability. Genetic trend was slightly favorable and late-term abortion PTA were correlated favorably by 0.27 with net merit, 0.49 with productive life, 0.33 with livability, 0.23 with CCR, 0.20 with HCR, 0.26 with DPR, -0.31 with somatic cell score, -0.24 with daughter stillbirth, and -0.26 with daughter dystocia. Thus, PTA for late-term abortions should not be needed as a separate fertility trait and instead these minor edit changes should suffice. The PTA for late-term abortions would add little value because national evaluations for current fertility traits already account for those economic losses.

Summary: Late-term abortions >152 days and <251 days of gestation that terminate a lactation or initiate a new lactation have long been recorded by Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI). For 22.7 million DHI lactations, the average recorded incidence of late-term abortions across all years (2001–2018) was 1.2%. However, the 1.3% incidence of late-term abortions reported in 2012 has declined to <1.0% incidence since 2015. For late-term abortion as a trait, estimated heritability was only 0.001 and predicted transmitting abilities (PTA) had a standard deviation of only 0.1% for recent sires with high reliability (>75%). Thus, PTA for late-term abortions should not be used as a separate fertility trait because national evaluations for current fertility traits already account for those economic losses.

Figure 1

Late-term abortion loss for animals in DHI herds born from years 2001 to 2018. The black, red, and blue dotted lines indicate the average late-term abortion loss across all years (1.18%), abortions reported from years 2001 to 2012 (1.3%), and abortion reported from years 2012 to 2018 (0.99%), respectively.

Figure 2

Monthly distribution of late-term abortion loss for animals in DHI herds born from years 2001 to 2018. The dotted red line indicates the average late-term abortion loss across all years (1.18%).