Inferring relationships between health and fertility in Norwegian Red cows using recursive models

Health and fertility are complex traits, and the phenotype for one trait may affect the phenotype of one or more other traits. For instance, disease in early lactation may impair a cow's ability to show estrus and to conceive after insemination. The objectives of the present study were to explore phenotypic and genetic relationships among health and fertility traits in Norwegian Red cows using a recursive effects model, which allows disentangling causal effects of phenotypes from the genetic and environmental correlations among traits. Records of interval from calving to first insemination (CFI), nonreturn rate within 56 d after first insemination (NR56), clinical mastitis (CM), ketosis (KET), and retained placenta from 55,568 first-lactation daughters of 1,577 Norwegian Red sires were analyzed. Trivariate recursive Gaussian-threshold models were used to analyze the 2 fertility traits (CFI and NR56) together with 1 disease trait in each analysis. The estimated structural coefficients of the recursive models imply that presence of KET or retained placenta lengthened CFI, whereas causal effects from CM to fertility were negligible. Recursive effects of disease on NR56, and of CFI on NR56, were all close to zero. Genetic correlations between health and fertility traits were low or moderate. The strongest genetic correlation was between KET and CFI (0.29), whereas genetic correlations between CM and NR56 and between CFI and NR56 were nil. In general, selection against disease is expected to slightly improve fertility (shorter CFI and higher NR56) as a correlated response and vice versa. The present results suggest that the use of structural-equation models, such as the one used here, may enhance our understanding of complex relationships among traits.