Livestock production has come under increasing pressure in recent years due to negative environmental impacts. Problems include greenhouse gas emissions, water and soil pollution, resource consumption, declining genetic diversity, poor animal welfare, zoonotic diseases in humans, poorer health of the human population due to overconsumption of animal products, or the rise of antimicrobial resistance. The societal situation is influencing the formulation of breeding objectives that focus more on traits related to the efficiency and sustainability of the industry. Three sets of traits are considered to be the most important: (1) efficient use of energy, nutrients and environmental resources, (2) traits of health and resilience, and (3) animal welfare. Modern technology, sensors and the ability to process ever-increasing volumes of data play a key role in defining and measuring new phenotypes. At our department at VÚŽV, we have long been involved in the evaluation of health traits in dairy cows that are directly related to overall animal resilience. Resilience has been defined as the ability to withstand or be minimally affected by environmental disturbances, and to quickly return to a pre-existing state once the disturbance has passed. Deviations of daily yield from the expected, optimal level of performance were proposed as indicators of resilience. The natural logarithm as well as the autocorrelation of deviations are heritable and also positively genetically correlated with better udder and hoof health, lower incidence of ketosis, better fertility, longevity, body condition and higher dry matter intake. In preparation for the resilience assessment, we focused on assessing the causes of culling in dairy cows in the Czech Republic. We found that the causes were similar for both the two most numerous breeds, Holstein (H) and Czech Fleckvieh (C). For both, health reasons were the most frequent (> 70%) followed by fertility disorders (≥ 20%). Genetic parameters were calculated for the most frequent specified causes of culling (difficult parturition TP, udder disease V, fertility disorders PP), which showed a low genetic component characterized by heritability coefficients of 0.01 (TP and V) and 0.02 (PP). The breeding values of bulls with more than 100 daughters were correlated with their breeding values for health traits to approximate the genetic linkage between traits. The highest correlation (0.29) was found between culling for udder disease and susceptibility to clinical mastitis, then between culling for heavy parturition and susceptibility to retained placenta and metritis (0.10), and finally between culling for fertility disorders and susceptibility to retained placenta. The high proportion of cows culled for health reasons shows the significant potential of breeding for improved health and resilience and its contribution to improving the sustainability and efficiency of dairy farming in the country.