Usability of bacteriological milk analyses for genetic improvement of udder health in Austrian Fleckvieh cows

In addition to somatic cell count records and clinical mastitis diagnoses, results of bacteriological milk analyses provide valuable information regarding udder health. The pathogen causing an udder infection is currently not considered in Austria as part of the information used for estimation of routine breeding values for mastitis resistance. Therefore the objective of this study was to estimate heritabilities for, and genetic correlations between, udder traits of bacterial infection (bacterial infection, gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial infection) and routinely recorded udder health traits [acute mastitis, chronic mastitis, culling due to udder health problems, and somatic cell score (SCS)] in Austrian Fleckvieh cows. The basis for the genetic analyses was a data set with results from bacteriological milk analyses collected from 237 dairy farms and 6,822 cows over a period of 1 yr. Traits were defined as binary, apart from SCS, for which measures were available continuously. Multivariate analyses using a linear animal model were applied for estimating genetic parameters. The heritabilities for the occurrence of bacterial udder infection traits were 0.01. Heritabilities were 0.04 for acute mastitis, 0.02 for chronic mastitis, 0.02 for culling due to udder health problems, and 0.20 for SCS. Genetic correlations between bacteriological infection and the routinely recorded udder health traits were positive and ranged from 0.62 to 0.96. The genetic correlation between gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial infection was -0.20. The genetic correlation between acute and chronic mastitis was also close to zero. These results show that mastitis caused by different pathogens may be seen as different traits. As analyses were based on a relatively small data set and results were associated with rather high standard errors, further research with a larger data set should be carried out to confirm these results