465. Full-scale Simulation of the Norwegian Red Dairy Cattle Breeding Programme to Enable Testing Future Breeding Directions

A full-scale simulation that can cover all aspects of an ongoing breeding programme is a useful tool to test future breeding decisions. For example, dairy breeding is facing new challenges to include feed efficiency and methane emission traits in their breeding goals. To this end we have simulated a real size breeding programme of the Norwegian Red dairy cattle with detailed population structures and breeding decisions over the last 50 years. We simulated traditional progeny test and genomic selection scheme using AlphaSimR package. The simulation involved about 0.5 million animals per year spread across 7,000 herds with variable size, five groups of lactating cows, calves, heifers, and young, waiting, and proven bulls. This In-silico simulation tool will enable Geno SA – Norwegian Red breeding organisation to test future breeding directions, such as, including feed efficiency and methane emission traits into a selection index.