Dairy herd genetic reports

Herd genetic reports help you see the breeding potential of your milking cows and youngstock through their genetic index. Find out about these reports and what they can tell you about traits and inbreeding values.

Herd genetic reports (HGRs) are available to all UK dairy farmers who fully milk record. They allow you to see the genetic potential of milking cows and youngstock, giving you information on the following:

• £PLI – a within-breed genetic index designed for all-year-round calvers
• £ACI and £SCI – across-breed indexes designed for autumn and spring block calvers
• Milk (kg)
• Fat and protein (kg and %)
• Inbreeding level
• Management traits – including SCC, mastitis, fertility, maintenance and lifespan

The HGR provides information in six parts, as outlined below.

Herd genetic report summary

The report summary gives you an overview of your dairy herd by age or lactation number. The summary allows you to monitor trends and identify strengths and weaknesses across a herd.

The herd standards report

The herd standards report compares your herd by youngstock or lactation group against national breed averages. This report allows you to identify genetic strengths within your herd, while also highlighting the weaknesses and areas where you can make improvements.

Herd sire list

The herd sire list shows all the sires that have daughters in your milking herd or youngstock. It allows you to easily identify previously used sires, as well as giving you their genetic evaluation data.

Youngstock report

The youngstock report allows you to review each animal’s genetic potential so that you can choose the most suitable animals to breed future replacements. The youngstock report also identifies the strongest and weakest animals by genetic trait, helping you make more strategic breeding decisions. All animals can be re-ranked by specific traits (such as fertility or SCC) to help you identify strengths and weaknesses. This report is routinely updated when genomic data is available.

Milking cow report

The milking cow report is similar to the youngstock report, as it allows you to identify each milking cow’s strengths and weaknesses. As with the youngstock report, you can view all animals or apply filters to select specific groups (such as lactation group, fat %) to be bred. Both reports identify the genetically superior animals that could be used to breed your next generation of youngstock.

Inbreeding checker

The inbreeding checker allows you to independently assess the expected inbreeding level from mating your milking animals and/or youngstock against available bulls.

With the speed of genetic progress and the greater availability of new bulls, minimising inbreeding has become increasingly complex. The inbreeding checker allows you to select the animals you wish to breed, determine the bulls you’re interested in and then produce a report to highlight the resulting inbreeding for each mating. Any predicted inbreeding level above 6.25% is highlighted in red.

To try the herd genetic report yourself and see what it can do for you, access the Herd genetic report demo, using the username and password combination below.

Username: Demo farm

Password: Demo

The Herd Genetic Report website is run by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) with development support from Rade Digital.  We take the privacy and security of your personal information very seriously. We will never sell your data to third parties and the sensitive business information you provide will be treated as ‘commercial in confidence’ by us. How we use your information and take care of it is explained here.

What personal information we collect and why:

The personal information we collect will be your trading name, first name, surname, complete mailing address, email address and milk recording number to enable AHDB to create a user account if one does not yet exist for the farm, including identifying herd in our data set, and add the farm herd to the requesting third party account.

Like most websites, ours uses ‘cookies’ to help us make our website, and your user experience, better. Cookies mean that a website will remember you. They are small text files that sites transfer to your computer/tablet/smartphone and make interacting with a website faster and easier. There are more details in our Cookie Policy at https://ahdb.org.uk/cookies

How we will use your information:

We will use your information to administer your access to the Herd Genetic Report and to enable AHDB to contact you about updating who has access to your herd genetic information through third party authorisation requests.  We will also use your information to occasionally contact you about changes and developments to the Herd Genetic Report and related matters.

If we wish to use your information for any other purpose we will communicate this with you in advance.

How we will keep your information safe:

We ensure that there are appropriate technical controls in place to protect your personal information. Hard copy and online materials are kept secure with restricted and controlled access.

Our third party suppliers operate under contracts that cover how they manage personal information and comply with applicable UK Data Protection legislation.  The Herd Genetic Report website and your personal information is stored in the UK by IE Designs on its secure network and cloud environment.

We will never sell your personal information to third parties and we will not release your personal information to any company outside of the AHDB for their mailing or marketing purposes.

Third country transfers:

AHDB’s own systems and storage are within the European Economic Area (EEA) and as part of the Herd Genetic Report request process your data would not be transferred to any third country.

How long we will keep your data:

We will retain your personal information until you choose to unsubscribe from the Herd Genetic Report by emailing your request to breeding.evaluations@ahdb.org.uk

Your Rights:

By law you have certain rights over your personal data that we hold – see www.ico.org.uk for guidance on your rights.  You have the right to ask us to correct any errors, the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and the right to object (based on your specific situation) to Rade Digital or AHDB’s processing, and the right to request erasure. To enquire about exercising any of these rights please contact breeding.evaluations@ahdb.org.uk. We may need to verify your identity before implementing your request.

The AHDB Privacy Notice:

The full AHDB Privacy Notice can be found on our website at www.ahdb.org.uk/PrivacyNotice