Estimation of genetic and phenotypic parameters for production traits in Holstein and Jersey from Colombia

Objective. Determine the genetic and phenotypic parameters for milk yield, fat percentage, protein percentage and somatic cell score. Materials and methods. 18134 lactation records were used to Holstein and 1377 lactations for Jersey in different herds. The (co) variance components and genetic parameters were estimated using the software Multiple Trait Derivative-Free Restricted Maximum Likelihood MTDFREML. Results. The Holstein and Jersey heritability’s (and standard error) for milk yield were: 0.16 (0.082) and 0.15 (0.306), 0.30 (0.079) and 0.37 (0.319) for protein percentage, 0.32 (0.076) and 0.46 (0.313) for fat percentage and for somatic cell score were: 0.01 (0.054) and 0.01 (0.233), respectively. The largest genetic correlations were found between the percentage of fat and percentage of protein, with values of 0.82 (0.126) and 0.98 (0.852) for Holstein and Jersey respectively. The lowest correlations were between fat percentage and somatic cell score with -0.01 (1.147) and -0.01 (1. 734). Phenotypic correlations were generally found low and repeatability showed a significant effect of permanent environment on milk production per lactation. Conclusions. It is important to emphasize the development of research to help guide breeding programs in the tropics, using selection indices of multi-traits.