What are the advantages of linear appearance evaluation of dairy cows?

The linear appearance evaluation of dairy cows was founded by the United States in 1980, and was introduced to China in 1987. In 1994, the linear appearance evaluation standard of China Holstein cattle was promulgated. At present, almost all dairy breeding organizations and artificial insemination institutions in the world use linear evaluation to obtain the morphological structure information of dairy cows, which is used to guide the selection of dairy cows.

Adopting linear evaluation has the following advantages:

(1) When this method is used to evaluate dairy cows, all traits are scored separately, instead of combining multiple traits according to impressions, which has less mutual interference and is convenient for selecting different traits.

(2) The scoring method of body linear appearance evaluation is based on the biological characteristics of dairy cows, that is, all evaluation characteristics belong to the biological category of dairy cows. Moreover, only the performance of traits is recorded, and it is not compared with the ideal body shape, which is objective and beneficial to the choice between male and female cows.

(3) Using measurable figures, the evaluation is accurate and intuitive.

(4) With the help of computer software, the evaluation data can be analyzed by continuous scale and evaluated by mixed model, which can improve the scientificity of seed selection according to body shape and appearance.