MACE weighting factors for direct and maternal EBVs from multiple-trait models

When MACE was first applied, number of daughters (ND) were used as weighting factors for national EBV of sires. Interbull (2000) replaced ND with effective daughter contributions (EDC), which accounted for ND, but also for the number of effective records each daughter contributed to the sire’s genetic evaluation. Effective records were adjusted for the estimation of fixed effects, correlated or repeated trait information, performance information of sires’ mates, and linear function definitions of index traits. Hence, the EDC accounted for major differences in the national genetic evaluation models of most countries.