Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2017
There are now a range of new reproductive technologies which are actually or potentially available for use in commercial dairy cows. To obtain an economic assessment of adopting the use of such new technologies, the effects of the technology adoption on milk production resulting from genetic lift, generic gain and the conception rate have to be estimated. This paper demonstrates a Markov chain model which allows die estimation of these effects by considering the change in physiological state of individual cows and the genetic improvement through me use of embryo transfer to produce replacement heifers.