Pacheco Hendyel A, Hernandez Rick O, Chen Shi-Yi, Neave Heather W, Pempek Jessica A, Brito Luiz F
Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907; Farm Animal Genetic Resources Exploration and Innovation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan 611130, China.
J Dairy Sci. 2025 Jan;108(1):6-32. doi: 10.3168/jds.2024-24953. Epub 2024 Oct 9.
Understanding and assessing dairy cattle behavior is critical for developing sustainable breeding programs and management practices. The behavior of individual animals can provide valuable information on their health and welfare status, improve reproductive management, and predict efficiency traits such as feed efficiency and milking efficiency. Routine genetic evaluations of animal behavior traits can contribute to optimizing breeding and management strategies for dairy cattle but require the identification of traits that capture the most important biological processes involved in behavioral responses. These traits should be heritable, repeatable, and measured in noninvasive and cost-effective ways in many individuals from the breeding populations or related reference populations. Although behavior traits are heritable in dairy cattle populations, they are highly polygenic, with no known major genes influencing their phenotypic expression. Genetically selecting dairy cattle based on their behavior can be advantageous because of their relationship with other key traits such as animal health, welfare, and productive efficiency, as well as animal and handler safety. Trait definition and longitudinal data collection are still key challenges for breeding for behavioral responses in dairy cattle. However, the more recent developments and adoption of precision technologies in dairy farms provide avenues for more objective phenotyping and genetic selection of behavior traits. Furthermore, there is still a need to standardize phenotyping protocols for existing traits and develop guidelines for recording novel behavioral traits and integrating multiple data sources. This review gives an overview of the most common indicators of dairy cattle behavior, summarizes the main methods used for analyzing animal behavior in commercial settings, describes the genetic and genomic background of previously defined behavioral traits, and discusses strategies for breeding and improving behavior traits coupled with future opportunities for genetic selection for improved behavioral responses.
了解和评估奶牛行为对于制定可持续育种计划和管理实践至关重要。个体动物的行为可以提供有关其健康和福利状况的有价值信息，改善繁殖管理，并预测饲料效率和挤奶效率等生产效率性状。对动物行为性状进行常规遗传评估有助于优化奶牛的育种和管理策略，但需要识别能够捕捉行为反应中最重要生物学过程的性状。这些性状应该是可遗传的、可重复的，并且能够以非侵入性和成本效益高的方式在育种种群或相关参考种群的许多个体中进行测量。尽管行为性状在奶牛种群中是可遗传的，但它们是高度多基因的，没有已知的主要基因影响其表型表达。基于行为对奶牛进行遗传选择可能具有优势，因为它们与动物健康、福利、生产效率以及动物和饲养员安全等其他关键性状有关。性状定义和纵向数据收集仍然是奶牛行为反应育种的关键挑战。然而，奶牛场中精密技术的最新发展和应用为行为性状的更客观表型分析和遗传选择提供了途径。此外，仍然需要对现有性状的表型分析方案进行标准化，并制定记录新行为性状和整合多个数据源的指南。本综述概述了奶牛行为最常见的指标，总结了在商业环境中分析动物行为的主要方法，描述了先前定义的行为性状的遗传和基因组背景，并讨论了育种和改善行为性状的策略以及未来通过遗传选择改善行为反应的机会。
