PERFORMANCE TRAITS STUDY OF HOLSTEIN FRIESIAN CATTLE UNDER SUBTROPICAL CONDITIONS

Performance traits of Holstein Friesian maintained at Agricultural University Dairy Farm Peshawar from 1999 to 2008 were studied to investigate the effect of sire, parity, season and year of calving on the traits under study. Heritability and repeatability estimates of various traits were worked out by data analysis. Mean lactation milk yield (LMY), lactation length (LL) and dry period (DP) were 3438 +/- 887.19 kg, 366.5 +/- 76.71 days and 100.26 +/- 61.38 days, respectively. Heritability estimates for LMY, LL and DP were 0.255 +/- 0.328, 0.184 +/- 0.161 and 0.171 +/- 0.204, respectively and repeatability estimates for these traits were 0.261 +/- 0.088, 0.194 +/- 0.073 and 0.198 +/- 0.085, respectively. Significant effect of calving season on the studied traits and low to moderate heritability and repeatability estimates depicted that these traits were highly influenced by non-genetic factors and efforts to improve subtropical environmental conditions will bring an improvement in these traits.