Table 8.

Spearman’s Rank Correlation coefficients of sires estimated breeding values for lactation pattern and milk production traits and lactation curve function parameters

Traits	Trait1
	IY	PY	YD	DP	LL	ln(a)	c
LY	0.97*	0.99*	0.99*	−0.33*	0.95*	0.96*	0.77*
IY		0.98*	0.96*	−0.44*	0.93*	0.94*	0.73*
PY			0.99*	−0.34*	0.95*	0.97*	0.76*
YD				−0.30*	0.96*	0.95*	0.81*
DP					−0.26*	−0.37*	0.07ns
LL						0.92*	0.82*
ln(a)							0.67*

¹LY = Lactation milk yield; IY = Initial milk yield; PY = Peak milk yield; YD = Average yield per d; DP = Days to peak; LL = Lactation length; ln(a) and c = parameters of the MIG function.

^*p<0.001, ns = Not significant.