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Abstract Records were analysed on more than 75 000 calvings by 685 Holstein-Friesian bulls tested in commercial dairy herds in England and Wales. The data were collected from 1988 to 1994. The traits analysed were the degree of difficulty at calving, assessed from no difficulty to serious difficulty, calf mortality to 48 h, gestation length and a subjective assessment of calf size. Information was available for the percentage Holstein genes in the sire, dam age (heifer or mature), sex of the calf and the year and month of the calving for all records, while lactation number of the dam and the regional location of the herd were also recorded in 1993 and 1994 (14988 records). Estimates of heritability and genetic and phenotypic correlations were obtained for all traits by restricted maximum likelihood (REML) procedures using a sire model, while also fitting the effects of dam age, calf sex, year and season of calving and significant interations. Heifers had more difficult calvings, higher calf losses and shorter gestations than mature cows while seriously difficult calvings and mortality were higher for male calves (all P < 0·05). Summer months were associated with lower incidences of difficult calvings, lower mortality and shorter gestations. Heritability estimates were 0·05 (s.e. <0·01) for calving difficulty score, 0·45 (s.e. 0·02) for gestation length, 0·02 (s.e. <0·01) for mortality and 0·08 (s.e. <0·01) for calf size score. Heritability estimates for the scored categorical and binomial (mortality) traits were also obtained using threshold model analysis. As expected, these estimates were higher than the REML estimates; 0·12 (s.e. 0.01) for calving difficulty score, 0·08 (s.e. 0·01) for mortality and 0·14 (s.e. 0·01) for calf size score. Calving difficulty score was genetically correlated with calf size score (-0.81), mortality (0.40) and gestation length (0.34) and calf size score was moderately correlated with mortality (-0.40). In all cases, the genetic correlations were stronger than the corresponding phenotypic correlations. Sire genetic merit was predicted for calving difficulty score and the distribution of these predictions is described. Sire predictions for calving difficulty score on the underlying scale were backtransformed to predict the expected incidence of serious difficulties in future calvings.