AIPL Web Tour

Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory
Bldg. 005, Room 306, BARC-West
10300 Baltimore Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705-2350
301-504-8334 (voice) • 301-504-8092 (fax) • http://aipl.arsusda.gov

Most of the data sent to AIPL and most of the information people get from AIPL are exchanged electronically over the internet. The AIPL website has information about the lab, links to other dairy related sites, information about the genetic evaluations, and tools for getting specific genetic information.

• Start your tour at the AIPL home page (This link opens a new window with the homepage on the right, and this guide in a frame to the left. Use the scroll bar in the left frame for the guide. You can also print this page now to use as a reference as you explore our site. The URL for the AIPL home page is: http://aipl.arsusda.gov
• GENETIC EVALUATIONS
  
  • Take a quick look at the "home" page. Find the heading "EVALUATIONS" and click on it. The first heading on this page is 'Evaluations of individual animals'. Click on the link for "General Animal Queries" (a query is a request for information).
  • The dairy cattle queries are grouped as bull (sire) and cow (dam) queries. We'll start with a cow, so scroll down to, or click on "Cow Information Queries" and click on the button next to "Get Cow Evaluation.".
  • Enter the identification number (ID) "H15086067" in the box, and then click the "submit" button. The evaluation of your cow will appear in the lower frame.
  • Look for the ID (H15086067) under the heading 'Cow'. Next to this is 'Sire' (your cow's father). The sire ID is a link to the evaluation for that bull. The next line of information under the ID includes more specific identification information (some of these headings are also links to reference notes) and information about the evaluation. Following that are the genetic evaluations, or Predicted Transmitting Abilities (PTA) for each trait.
    
    

    PTAm is the PTA for milk. Remember, this number is the difference between the amount of milk (in pounds per year) that daughters of your cow are expected to produce and the amount that the daughters of an average Holstein cow in the same year will produce, due to the genes passed on from cow to daughter (positive PTA are above average, and negative PTA are below average). PTA are reported for milk (m), fat (f, f%), protein (p, p%), somatic cell score (SCS, a measurement of udder heath), and productive life (PL, a measurement of longevity).

    relm or just rel are the reliability (sometimes called repeatability) of the corresponding PTA, reported as a percent (.00 - .99). Reliability depends on the amount of information that contributed to the evaluation, and how similar the information from different sources was (the higher the reliability, the better the information and the prediction). What is "good" reliability? --That depends. Notice that the reliability for milk is higher than the reliability for PL. This cow has had several lactations to provide information for the PTA milk, but she is not old enough yet to know for sure what her own productive life will be. The PTA PL includes more information from relatives, which is slightly less reliable than information about the cow herself. We'll see later though that the highest reliabilities (.99) are for bulls, who have NO lactations themselves. This is because the best bulls have so many daughters and relatives providing information.

    Net Merit (NM$), Fluid Merit (FM$), and Cheese Merit (CM$) are estimates of the dollar value (from genetics) of the cow, on an average pay scale, for fluid milk production (regardless of fat or protein), and for cheese production (cheese depends on high protein), relative to the average. These numbers ar called indexes. They help farmers combine the information about genetics (PTA) with economics to decide which cows will be most profitable.

    PA are parent averages, which are the average of the PTA's of your cow's parents, and the reliability of those averages.

  • Try a few half sisters(H15136347, H17167953, H17254905), and compare the evaluations.
  • Now we'll look at a bull evaluation. Click on the 'Sire' ID in one of these evaluations (HO 2130775). The first three rows give identification and evaluation information (with more clickable links to explanations). A section headed "Most Daus" gives information about the herd with the most daughters of this bull. Next to are the merit indexes (NM$, FM$, and CM$) and then the PTAs for the bull.

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• Now that you are familiar with the information in an evaluation, click on "AIPL Home Page" at the left of the screen to go back to the main AIPL web page. Find the link for "Cow and Bull lists/tables" (below the "query" link you used before), and click on it.
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• First, click on "Means for calculating PTA%." PTA's are reported as the difference from the breed average. This table is where we report the averages used each time we do evaluations. Because of genetic improvement in each new generation, these numbers tend to increase over time. As a cow or bull gets older, even if all available information stays the same (and the genes stay the same, of course) a PTA may go down slightly as the breed average goes up.

To illustrate this, let's look at the a sire evaluation history. Use the left index link for "Genetic Evaluation Results" and click on "General" under "Animal Queries." This time select "Get bull evaluation history." Enter "H2130775." This bull's PTAm increased early on, as more information was included in his evaluations, but has decreased over the last three years. Click on "Genetic Evaluation Results" again, and then "Cow and Bull lists/tables" at the top of the page.

• Click on the link for "Elite cow lists (registered and grade)." AIPL releases a list of cows with superior genetic evaluations for each breed. These cows are in the top 1-3% percent of their breed. Use the "Back" button at the top of the page. Now click on "Complete sire list." This lists provides basic evaluation information on every bull, organized by breed. AIPL does not have a top sire list similar to the elite cow list. Sire rankings are provided by the breed organizations.
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• Using the link at the left, return to the AIPL home page. Some fun parts of our site are the History Page, and the Kids Corner, which includes quizzes, and dairy games! The search engine on the home page is specific for the AIPL web site. Try it out!
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• The last stop on the tour is the "Industry Links and Contacts" page, which is reached with a link on the home page, or in the left index frame. Some fun sites to visit are: the breed associations, the National Dairy Shrine, and the other USDA web sites.