Reliability is the term given to the accuracy of each evaluation. Reliability considers all sources of information parents, performance, and progeny - and ranges in value from 0 to .99. Reliability should be used to decide how much to use an animal in a breeding program. The measure of accuracy in the animal model system of genetic evaluation is called Reliability. This term replaces Repeatability which served a similar purpose in the herdmate comparison and MCC systems.
Reliability considers contributions from parents, performance, and progeny.
The MCC did not consider parents or progeny data from sons when estimating accuracy of bull evaluations. Also, since progeny information was not used in cow evaluations under the MCC, such data are a new influence on Reliability of cow evaluations under the animal model. Impact of pedigree information on Reliability of a bull's evaluation. Reliability of pedigree data is one fourth the sum of parents' Reliabilities. For example, information in the pedigree of a bull being evaluated is measured by one fourth of the sum of Reliabilities of the bull's parents.