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What is Clarifide®
Clarifide is an Australian genomic selection tool to assist in the detection of superior dairy heifers from as early as birth.
It was designed by DataGene and Zoetis in conjunction with: Dairy Australia, Dairy Futures CRC and the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transportation and Resources.
Clarifide allows informed selection and breeding decisions.
How does Clarifide® work?
Clarifide interprets the genetic information encoded in your heifers’ DNA and converts it into a practical decision making tool to help improve your selection and breeding decisions.
When used as part of your annual planning calendar, Clarifide allows you to predict the production, health and type potential of your heifers.
Clarifide helps avoid the expense of raising genetically inferior animals.
Clarifide and young heifers
Using Clarifide on young heifers will provide a breeding value with similar reliability to an ABV calculated for a 7thlactation recorded cow.
Clarifide reliably delivers a heifer’s ABV from birth
Clarifide allows you to manage heifers
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For further information please refer to the following literature
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What breeds can test with Clarifide?
What breeds can test with Clarifide?
Clarifide can be used to evaluate Holstein or Jersey or crosses of these two breeds.
Clarifide can be used on calves that are a mixture of Holstein and Jersey. If the sire is Holstein, the calf will go into the Holstein evaluation. If the sire is Jersey the calf will go into the Jersey evaluation.
However it is important to remember that ABVs generated for Holsteins cannot be directly compared with ABVs generated for Jerseys.
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Where does the data come from?
Where does the date come from?
This is an Australian prediction developed by scientists at the Victorian Department of Primary Industries in collaboration with the Australian dairy industry including DATAGENE, Holstein Australia and Dairy Australia.
These predictions were developed with Australian Breeding Values (ABVs) and were built for application to Australian animals and production systems. Clarifide results come out of the same analysis as the figures in the Good Bulls Guide published by DATAGENE.
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Can I test bulls with Clarifide?
Can I test bulls with Clarifide?
Yes, you can test your paddock bulls with Clarifide. In fact, testing your bulls with Clarifide will improve Clarifide results for any heifers that are the offspring of the paddock bull.
We will not test semen straws from AI bulls with Clarifide.
Due to additional database recording fees associated with males bulls are more expensive than females, (refer to Zoetis Clarifide fee schedule).
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How reliable is Clarifide? How is it validated?
How reliable is Clarifide? How is it validated?
On average, the reliability of Clarifide results is equivalent to the information recorded on a cow over over seven lactations. In short, the information from Clarifide exceeds that which would normally be recorded over a cow’s lifetime.
For bulls, the reliability of Clarifide is calculated by estimating the correlation between genomic ABV and the true ABV (that is, how accurately the genomic test predicts the true ABV). The reliability of each Clarifide test is then calculated individually by the DATAGENE evaluation system and takes into account the reliability of the parent ABVs as well as the reliability of the genomic ABVs.
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How is DNA extracted from the hair sample?
How is DNA extracted from the hair sample?
Hair follicles are trimmed from the hair shaft into a little tube and digesting these with enzymes that break down cell structures to release DNA into solution.
DNA is then amplified (repeatedly copied) using a series of reactions to produce enough copies to conduct the Clarified tests.
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How do you know what DNA relates to what trait?
How do you know what DNA relates to what trait?
Clarifide assess tens of thousands of DNA “markers” to predict the genomic breeding values (ABVg). These DNA markers employed for Clarifide are well-defined and commonly-used.
Each marker is given a relative “weighting” for its contribution to a particular trait, and all of these weightings are combined across the thousands of markers measured for each animal to give a prediction of performance. The weighting contribution of each marker (the “equation”) is calculated from a resource population of thousands of animals to build the most accurate equation possible.
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