Calving performance in damish breeds of dual purpose cattle

In the last decade much information has already been obtained on calving performance, especially by means of biometrics. The present publication gives additional data on this subject.Data from 1 484 first calvings in two dual purpose Danish breeds of cattle (Red Danish and Black Pied Danish) were analysed. The original data from the progeny testing stations, and calving performance was scored on a scale: 1 = normal; 2 = slightly difficult; 3 = very difficult. The age of the helfers was on average 29.6 months.Heritability for the scored calving performance was calculated in two different ways, the results ranging from 0.13 to 0.32 for Red Danish and from 0.10 to 0.18 for Black Pied Danish.The phenotypic correlation between calving difficulty score and weight of calf was found to be between 0.18 and 0.26 for both breeds.The levels of the genetic correlations indicate that in the Red Danish breed the bigger heifers have the easiest calvings. For the Black Pled Breed the smallest heifers have the easiet calvings. For both breeds heifers with wider hips and thurls have more difficult calvings.