Genetic parameters for casein and urea content in the Italian Brown Swiss dairy cattle

A total of 137,753 test day records of 20,745 Italian Brown Swiss dairy cows from 26 provinces of Italy were used to estimate heritability for casein and urea content in milk and their genetic correlations with other production traits and milk somatic cell score. Milk component values were obtained by Fourier Transformed Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy from milk samples collected during national routine recording and were analysed using test day repeatability animal models. Fixed effects included 1,001 levels of herd-test date, 15 classes of days in milk, and 13 classes of age at calving within parity. The variation among cows was large for most of the traits. The heritability value for casein content was 0.31, as for protein content, and genetic and phenotypic correlations between these two traits were large (0.99 and 0.97 respectively). Milk urea content had a heritability of 0.17 and a positive genetic relationship with fat (0.12), null with protein (0.03) and casein (0.002) content and a negative genetic correlation with milk yield (-0.17) suggesting that the genetic improvement for milk urea content would be possible, but genetic gain would be affected by other traits included as selection criteria in the economic index and by their relative economic emphasis.