Random Regression Genetic Evaluation of Holstein Bulls using different Test Day records

In order to determine the optimum number of test-day records for the progeny test program of Holstein bulls, 732,140 milk yield test-day were used. These milk yield test-days, which were related to 73,214 first parity dairy cows belonging to 62 herds, had been collected by the Animal Breeding Center of Iran from 1992 to 2016. The correlation of predicted breeding value (EBV) of bulls from ten test-day of their daughters compared with EBV predicted from different number of recorded test-days. The Correlation of predicted EBV from ten test-days with EBV from even, odd, (second, fifth, seventh), (second, fifth, tenth) and (second, sixth) test-day records were estimated to be 0.99, 0.98, 0.98, 0.97 and 0.94 respectively. The results showed that to reduce cost of recording, number of records and generation interval in EBV prediction of bulls with random regression model it is possible to use only second, fifth and seventh test-days instead of ten test-days.