Culling reasons in organic and conventional dairy herds and genotype by environment interaction for longevity

Dairy cow longevity combines all functional traits and is thought to be especially important in organic production, which is an established, increasing part of Swedish dairy production, representing approximately 6% of the market. The aim of this study was to compare dynamics in culling reasons between organic and conventional production and to analyze genotype by environment interactions for longevity. The data contained information from all organic herds with information available from official recording (n=402) and from approximately half of the conventional herds (n=5,335). Records from Swedish Holsteins (n=155,379) and Swedish Red cows (n=160,794) that had their first calf between January 1998 and September 2003 were included. The opportunity period for longevity was at least 6 yr. Six longevity traits were defined: length of productive life; survival through first, second, and third lactations; fertility-determined survival; and udder health-determined survival. Twenty codes were used to describe the cause of culling, and these were divided into 8 groups: udder health, low fertility, low production, leg problems, metabolic diseases, other diseases, other specified causes, and unspecified cause. The main reason for culling cows in organic herds was poor udder health, whereas for cows in conventional herds it was low fertility. Furthermore, the shift in main culling reason from fertility, which was most common in first lactation regardless of production system, to udder health occurred at a lower age in organic production. Heritabilities and genetic correlations for the longevity traits expressed in organic and conventional herds were estimated from a bivariate animal model. The genetic correlations were close to unity (>0.88), except for fertility-determined survival in the Swedish Red breed (0.80). Heritabilities were low to moderate, and no clear pattern was identified for production system or breed. In general, the results indicate that farmers' culling criteria differ between organic and conventional production. Different preferences may influence the need for alternative selection indexes for organic production, with different weightings of traits, or a separate breeding program. However, no genotype by environment interaction of importance was found between the production systems.