The Dairy Crossbred Blog - An Independent Look at Crossbreeding

Time 2020-12-25 06:03:39

Web Name: The Dairy Crossbred Blog - An Independent Look at Crossbreeding

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Took a stroll around the pens and snapped a few pictures:Defender (Holstein) x Enrico (Fleckvieh) x TD (Brown Swiss) x Holstein First lactation peak 94 lbs/day 4.5% fat 3.2% proteinSupersire (Holstein) x Ugostar (Montbeliarde) x Sperringe (Swedish Red) x Holstein First lactation 122 lbs/day 3.2% fat 3.2% proteinPell Pers (Viking Red) x Iota (Holstein) x Pollyden (Brown Swiss) x Paramount (Jersey) x Holstein First lactation 76 lbs/day 3.9% fat 3.0% proteinVanstein (Fleckvieh) x Crown (Holstein) x Celebrity (Jersey) x Peterslund (Swedish Red) x HolsteinFirst lactation 66 lbs/day 3.7% fat 3.1% protein @ 68 days in milkPell Pers (Viking Red) x Petrone (Holstein) x Raastad (Norwegian Red) x B Jurist (Swedish Red) x Manfred (Holstein) First lactation 70 lbs/day 4.2% fat 3.2% protein @ 58 days in milkAdi (Swiss Simmental) x Cadet (Holstein) Second lactation 109 lbs/day 4.3% fat 3.0% proteinPronto (Brown Swiss) x Peterslund (Swedish Red) x HolsteinSecond lactation 94 lbs/day 4.3% fat 3.4% proteinEnrico (Fleckvieh) x Rocket (Jersey) x Jonah (Holstein)Third lactation 97 lbs/day 5.2% fat 3.2% proteinFoske (Viking Red) x Merchant (Jersey) x Holstein Third lactation 112 lbs/day 3.5% fat 3.1% proteinArbelunda (Swedish Red) x Oran (Montbeliarde) x Holstein Just fresh for her sixth lactation. Fifth lactation 31570 lbs milk 1179 lbs fat 1018 lbs protein in 338 days Days open by lactation: 80, 66, 78, 101, 116 Being that we are a month into 2017, I m finally getting around to spelling out a breeding plan for the year.The basic theory of my breeding plan will not change.  There was a discussion in the last post about uniformity.  Are there benefits to having a uniform herd?  In economic terms, I don t necessarily believe so.  That s facility dependent of course.  Over my ten years of crossbreeding experimentation I ve probably put together one of the least uniform herds out there.  Has this been detrimental?  I wouldn t say so.  Yet as I look at my heifers freshening, I m beginning to see more and more uniformity.  Uniformity is a consequence of finding our own breeding patterns.  I ve become more dialed in the past few years on the type of cow I find to be most successful in my operation.  It only makes sense that as I find my successful cross that my young cows begin to reflect that.  And the shades of past experimentation become so diluted they are no longer noticeable.  So when we talk about uniformity, it s not necessarily something to strive for, but it will happen on its own as you settle into your own breeding plan.Now that we have uniformity out of the way, we can talk about some nuts and bolts of how I ll be breeding cows in 2017.  While my base of purebred Holsteins has dwindled almost down to zero, that also means I m also seeing fewer two-way crosses.  Most of the heifers I am freshening are now working their way through the second rotation in a three-way crossing system.No matter what I ve done, I m always going to go back to pure Holstein every third generation.  Having a good high production Holstein bull in the pedigree of your cows will give you a lot of latitude in the next few generations of a three-way cross.  We ve been using a lot of Seagull-Bay Supersire over the past several years.  I m now milking crossbred Supersire daughters in second lactation and I m pretty well content that putting a high priority on pounds of combined fat and protein in my Holstein selection criteria is a sound strategy.With that in mind, it s hard to back away from Supersire as he is approaching 10,000 daughters in his proof and still ranks among the best in the breed for lbs. CFP at +179.  Even among his sons and grandsons that have no milking daughters!  I am backing off on Supersire on my heifers in favor of S-S-I Montross Jett-ET.  Jett s full brother Jedi gets more headlines as a sire of sons, but Jett is a nice alternative for the same genetics.  At +166 lbs CFP, he combines elite production with some nice health traits.Being that I m not trying to create the next elite genomic purebred Holstein, I ve become more conscious of selecting some more budget friendly sires that still meet my genetic criteria and also provide excellent semen fertility.  Pen-Col Marty has been the Holstein bull that s filled that gap for me.  At +147 lbs CFP, Marty is more than adequate for production.  To top it off, he s been running about 15% above average on conception for me.For the Red breeds, I will continue using a mix of Viking Red and Norwegian Red.  Both breeds have some great bulls and there is enough quality with both that if you want to stick to one, you can.  For Viking Red we have been using Flame across heifers and cows. Foske X Gunnarstorp x O Brolin for a pedigree reads like a list of bulls I ve used in crossbreeding over the years.  While I worry less about inbreeding when crossbreeding, given that my herd is saturated with Foske, Gunnarstorp and O Brolin genes I will probably lay off Flame after using a hundred or so units.  We ve recently brought in some semen from the genomic young sire Hielke. You ll notice the white face on Hielke, he is 4% Montbeliarde.  To me that is of no consequence.  I ll be using him as the Red part of the three-way rotation.  His genomic proof is pretty solid all around.  Good production matched with balanced health and type.For Norwegian Red we have also been going pretty strong with a genomic young sire.  Rud has been seeing significant usage in my cows.  His big draw is that he is homozygous polled.  All of his offspring will be polled.  Polled hasn t necessarily been a trait that I ve chased but when the bulls fit what I m looking for I am more than happy to go for it. Rud is from a well built pedigree, Lekve x Velsvik.  Being homozygous polled is just icing on the cake.  We are also still using a fair amount of Skjelvan and are having lots of Gopollen calves hitting the ground now.  Skjelvan has an unreal production proof in both Norway and the United States.  Gopollen is one of those solid all around bulls that looks to have gotten the good traits from both Braut and Peterslund.Another Red bull we are looking to bring from the UK is Wyevalley Tango P.  He has been genomic tested in the United States and has some very nice production numbers (+1855 lbs milk, +91 lbs fat, +75 lbs protein).  A Tangvoll x Bangkok, he also is a heterozygous polled carrier, giving 50% polled calves.  At $650 net merit, he is the number two polled bull on the US base.  I ll also give a little plug here if anybody is interested in getting some Tango, you can contact eryl_vet @ hotmail.com.With Tango and a few other North American Red bulls coming on the market, I m starting to see some further development in my own small North American Red herd.  While I do not have any bulls in the pipeline, I see that as good news because I have replenished my supply of females.  I have some blood collected on some interesting pedigrees that should give some nice genomic results.  With my red program, I am looking to use bulls that translate well to the USA and in particular the net merit index.  But I also don t want to just stack high net merit numbers together, the matings still need to make sense.  Gopollen at $897 net merit and the fact that I did not use Braut in my Red absorption program makes him the most attractive option.  Flame at $820 net merit also looks good but I will have to avoid the Foske daughters I have,  And going way back, I ve got a secret stash of O Brolin semen ($720 net merit) that I ve pulled out on occasion for a Red absorption mating.  I m also looking to get more polled into my Reds, and Eggtroen seems to be a solid, proven option ($755 net merit) that has worked well in my crossbreeding program also.With the strength breeds, we ve been using a steady mix of Montbeliarde and Fleckvieh.  I m pretty well over my fear of using Montbeliarde in virgin heifers.  We do have to get the chains out a little more often.  On the five point scale (one being easiest, five being hardest calving), Montbeliarde sired calves of virgin heifers average 1.8.  All my other virgin heifer calvings average 1.4.  We tend to remember the worst calvings, but when I look at the overall picture I don t see 1.8 as being a detriment to using Montbeliarde on heifers.  With all that said, we put a premium on calving ease score when selecting Montbeliarde bulls for heifers.  We used Hornet for a while and have a handful of calves on the ground.  For current service sires, we ve moved on to Ilax, Illusion, and Impec.  Being young sires, we have been using 60-100 units of each bull and moving on to another.  So it is possible I will be using a completely different lineup of bulls by the end of the year.Fleckvieh also continues to be a very large part of my breeding program.  With my oldest Fleckvieh now into their third lactation, I have no doubt of their milking ability and the added beef potential is a big positive.  Of course we do not want cows that don t milk anything just so we can get a higher cull check.  But when the milking ability is there, the increased cull checks are like icing on top of the profitability cake.  I ve about used up some of the last Rurex semen out there in North America.  Waldhoer is one of those bulls that I ve settled in with and will end up being a foundation sire in my herd.  He is probably the best strength breed bull I ve ever seen for calving ease so I ve also snuck him into my heifer program too.  I m also licking my chops at the possible opportunity to use Reumut again.  His proof has held right up there with 558 daughters in Germany.  Reumut s dam is definitely the cow that left the biggest impression on me in Germany.  Other Fleckvieh bulls we added to the tank this week include Manuap, Windeck and Evra.  I ve heard some good things on Manuap, and his proof says strong muscling, high fat production and excellent udders.I m also going to give some Normande bulls another roll.  I ve been using some old Redondo semen up lately, as he s an old favorite.  There is a new generation of young sires available in the United States that caught my attention.  Infinity and Jesse are two of the bulls I ve decided to give a try.  Normande can fit right into a three-way crossing system with Holstein and Scandinavian Red, as Redondo has taught me.  I don t have many Normande heifers in the pipeline so I figured it was time to give them another whirl.For all the experimentation I ve done over the years, I think I ve pretty well settled on a winning pattern if not a coherent system for crossbreeding.  Systems can be much more simple than my own but I enjoy the variety of bloodlines each breed that I use have to offer. The bottom line is that I remain committed to crossbreeding and look forward to further developing and improving my herd.  With that, I offer cheers to all for a successful 2017! Viking Red (Foske) X Holstein X Holstein X MontbeliardeIt s been some time since I ve checked in so it s time for an update.The transformation of the herd from Holstein to crossbred is nearly complete with a small handful of durable Holsteins still hanging around.  We just confirmed a nearly ten year old pure Holstein (Ramos daughter) pregnant on her first service.  I do enjoy working with the ones I have left and it allows me the rare opportunity to create more first generation crossbreds.  The old Ramos in question is pregnant to the Montbeliarde young sire Illusion.The first lactation cow pictured is a Foske daughter.  A little bit of an interesting breed stack there.  She goes back to one of my original Montbeliarde cows where I became frightened and went Holstein the succeeding two generations before going back to crossing.  Officially, on her registration from the Composite Dairy Cattle Registry, she is designated as RE46, HO43, MO7, BS4.  That would be Red 46, Holstein 43, Montbeliarde 7 and Brown Swiss 4.  The Brown Swiss coming from Foske.On that same note, the above heifer (picture taken before calving) is one of my more interesting combinations.  She is an line bred crossbred.  Or maybe inbred crossbred is your preferred nomenclature.  She is a Dr. Gonzo (Montbeliarde X Jersey X Brown Swiss X Holstein bull) from a Swedish Red X Holstein X Brown Swiss X Holstein cow that came from another crossbred branch of the 1092 family that Dr. Gonzo comes from.  On her registration, she is defined as being MO25 SR25 HO24 BS13 JE13. Ultimately, my breeding goal with this cow will be to make coming up with her breed percentages as difficult as possible. She s actually a decent cow and in a way is the composition of my herd imprinted into one cow.When it comes to bulls that I have daughters milking, I ll give a tip of the cap to the previously mentioned Foske from Viking Genetics.  We are milking 23 daughters, all in first and second lactation.  Currently they are doing 1389 lbs of the herd average mature equivalent.  The second lactation cows are consistently rising to the top of the production lists for their age group.  I have no regrets using a lot of Foske.On the Norwegian side of the Red breeds, we ve calved in some more Braut daughters.  We all know enough about Braut but one bull that kind of went under the radar is Bosnes.  I ve been describing the Bosnes daughters as sneaky good .  You don t really notice them, for reasons good or bad.  But then when I compile the production reports they are at the top of the list for any Red bulls I ve used in terms of production.On the Montbeliarde side of things, the Valfin daughters continue to impress as they start to enter their third lactation.  With mature equivalents over 30,000, the Valfin daughters are the highest producing Montbeliarde daughters in the herd.  Crowning Valfin as Bull of the Year several years ago may have been premature but the performance has definitely matched the expectations in my herd.  Some of the more impressive heifers we ve calved in lately have been sired by Robin.  They are more dairy for a Montbeliarde but the early production has been tremendous.  The Montbeliardes can be notorious slow starters but this is not the case with the Robin daughters.We are now up to 35 Fleckvieh daughters milking and we currently have 67 Fleckvieh heifers coming in behind them.  For comparisons sake, we are milking 62 Montbeliarde daughters and have 70 Montbeliarde heifers.  I m starting to get a better sample size to make a comparison between Fleckvieh and Montbeliarde.  I can say that I ve been shown some data from the United States that shows the Fleckvieh sired animals are actually out milking the Montbeliarde daughters.  As for Fleckvieh bulls, my small group of Rurex daughters have impressed me so much that I snagged the rest of the Rurex semen available in the United States.  Essentially, the Rurex daughters are showing the benefits of true dual purpose cows.  They look like a beef cow but they milk like a dairy cow.  The best of both worlds.  While it is a small sample, the Rurex daughters in my herd are 4000 lbs above the herd lactation average!Finally, we can talk about some Holsteins.  The Holstein sired crossbreds are proving to be the most productive crossbreds which really shouldn t be all that much of a surprise.  We are starting to see heifers calving in from when I shifted my selection focus to be more production oriented.  The Supersire daughters are now entering second lactation and absolutely blowing their dams away in terms of production.  While Supersire s daughter pregnancy rate is on the edge of what I d consider bad, we haven t had all that much trouble getting them pregnant.  Which I d hope would be the case for any first lactation animals.With that, I ll stop for now.  But stay tuned for the next update where I will go through some bulls we are currently using and breeding strategies currently being employed. An (almost) ten year old crossbredKudos to Mark Schmitz for giving me the idea for this post in a comment from part one.This is the question that Mark posed, and instead of replying with a comment, I thought I d dedicate an entire post to the topic.Knowing what you know now about your crossbred animals, what would you do differently if you were to start crossbreeding a pure Holstein herd at your facility today?My name is not Marty McFly and I have no Doc Brown that will let me use a DeLorean time machine to travel back ten years.  But it is interesting to think about, and perhaps even relevant.  If I ever undertake another expansion, I will most likely fill the herd out with pure Holsteins.  So it is a position I could theoretically find myself in, in the future.  The ten years have been a learning process that still continues.  Though if I were starting again with pure Holsteins, I think I have a pretty decent idea of what I would do.First, there is no doubt that I would do a three-way rotation, much as I am currently doing.  I ve dabbled with two and four-way rotations (and even five-way), but I keep coming back to the three-way rotation.  I do think a better argument could be made for a two-way rotation rather than a four-way.  But to me, three-way strikes a perfect balance.  I strongly feel that going back to Holstein is necessary after going away from it for two generations.  I ve been quite critical of the Holstein over the years, but as I come full circle in my crossbreeding rotation I ve found a new appreciation for the breed and what it contributes to a crossbreeding program.  Holstein is the key ingredient for making a high producing crossbred animal.  So long as you actually select for production when selecting Holstein bulls.  Which is another lesson that time has taught me.With Holstein being established as the basis for production in my ideal crossbreeding system, the question turns to what breeds get put in between Holstein in the rotation?  Ten years and I do not have a precise answer to this question but there is a general pattern that I would follow.  ProCross is the most studied rotation and I would agree is the most fundamentally sound system out there.  But I do have a caveat.  I do not feel that a rotation necessarily needs to be limited to Viking Red and Montbeliarde.  Norwegian Red and Fleckvieh have both been just as effective in my own experience.  Normande is another breed that can fit well.  What it comes down to is using good bulls. The basic framework for my ideal crossbreeding rotation is based on the ProCross. If I were to put it into the form of a simple equation, it would go like this:Holstein + Strength Breed (Montbeliarde, Fleckvieh, Normande, Brown Swiss) + Red or Jersey = Good CowsAnother popular cross that I ve seen a lot of is the Holstein/Red/Jersey three-way combination.  When I began my journey crossbreeding, this was the path I initially chose.  Both Red and Jersey have their place in my ideal rotation, but putting those two together is not a direction I d like to continue after seeing a few hundred of this cross.  By no means would I call this a bad cross, I just feel that the inclusion of a strength breed makes for a better animal.  My biggest complaint about using Red and Jersey in combination would be udders.  I ve always tried to keep udders as a strong consideration when using Jersey, but it also seems that when using Jersey after generation one, the production just isn t there for some of the best udder bulls.  I know that this cross has its fans, and I m certainly not saying its proponents are misguided.  But for my own preferences, I don t like them together as much as I like them flanked by a strength breed and Holstein.  I still have a very large number of the Red/Jersey/Holstein cross and my plans for them continue to be going back to Holstein (which is kind of like hitting the reset button) before inserting a strength breed the next generation.In terms of a breeding strategy, the standard ProCross operating procedure is to breed your Holstein heifers to Viking Red and your Holstein cows to Montbeliarde.  I agree with this strategy.  Now that I m pretty deep into the process, I have no problem using Montbeliarde or Fleckvieh on my crossbred heifers.  But I d be wary of using them on purebred Holstein heifers.  For somebody starting out, splitting the cows and heifers between the two breeds also gives you a nice taste of both breeds and how they cross with Holstein.  After that, it s just a matter of always using the next breed.Lastly is the issue of simplicity.  I know many out there like to keep things from getting too complicated and have been critical of the complexity of what I ve been doing the last ten years.  Yes, trying all kinds of different things can be confusing.  But when you break it down into the equation I presented above, it s not that complicated.  In my herd s mating book, it s simple enough that a technician that does not share a first language with me is able to effectively execute my plan.  In Spanish terms, it s Holstein + Fuerte + Roja = Vacas Buenas!With that, I d love to hear other opinions on how they d handle things if given a blank slate, so fire away some comments! Part of a however many posts it takes to tell the story series.We ve now reached the point that the Earth has circled the sun ten times since I took over the breeding program on my farm full time.  Several years before I took over the breeding program, my father began to strive to create a more healthy and functional cow.  Production was not an issue in our Holstein herd.  We went through two expansions from 2000 to 2006 and it was imperative that we created a healthier and more fertile cow as we grew.  The pure Holsteins had excellent production, but we routinely ran pregnancy rates of less than 15% and fresh cow health was poor at best.  People with all kinds of different magic potions and products tried to help us put band aids over the real problem, in that our cows were not genetically fit to produce large amounts of milk and reproduce in a timely and healthy manner.We began by utilizing health trait data in bull selection within the Holstein breed.  While breeding for health traits is a pretty commonly accepted practice in the industry, back then there were plenty of skeptics preaching that breeding for type was the way to create a healthy Holstein cow.  When the daughters of the better health trait bulls (Duster sons, Manfred and sons being two examples used on our farm) came into milk we were impressed.  They were incrementally better, no doubt.  So we continued along this path until something else happened.  We housed some purebred Jerseys for another person.The Jerseys quickly acclimated to our setup and we soon took a liking to how resilient and trouble free they were compared to our Holsteins.  We were impressed, but didn t really want to go out and source a bunch of pure Jerseys.  Why not try breeding our Holsteins to Jersey?  The heifers were a good place to start.  After all, pulling calves from pure Holstein heifers had become a pretty common activity around the farm.  So we did just that.  While continuing to breed our multiparous cows to high health trait Holstein bulls, we began putting Jersey bulls into Holstein heifers.While this was all going on we started to hear rumblings from California about crossbreeding going on out there.  The difference being that they were using some strange Scandinavian Red breeds and another breed that looked like Herefords, the Montbeliarde.  With our Jersey experiment well underway and after meeting the people from Creative Genetics, we started to throw some Swedish Red into the mix and even tried a few units of that beef looking breed!That is about the point where I came onto the scene full time.  That is also where the insanity starts.  My dad was cautious, and rightfully so.  The Jerseys were milking and doing well.  Six months after I took over, the Swedish Reds came in and were also doing well.  Shortly after that, even those few Milking Herefords (as my hoof trimmer called the Montbeliarde crosses) came in and produced a satisfactory amount of milk.It answered a big question we had right off the bat.  Can these things milk?  We found that the answer was unequivocally affirmative.  Holsteins were definitely the high volume producers but when we looked at milk production figures where fat and protein were taken into consideration (total pounds of fat and protein, energy corrected milk, etc..) the crossbreds were more than competitive enough with the Holsteins.  Yet I was still warned by many that I was making a big mistake.  There is good reason that 90 percent of all dairy cows in the United States are pure bred Holsteins, I was told.  What about this group of crossbreds I had that were competing well?  The first cross is fine, but what the heck are you going to do after that?  You will really begin to suffer once you get another generation away from Holstein.  More skepticism.  But it was already too late, the three-way cross calves were already on the ground.  I d mostly been dealing with Swedish Red and Jersey, so I combined those two for a three-way cross.  And then I went ahead and began experimenting some more on my older cows.  The pendulum began to swing further away from the pure Holstein.Stay tuned for part two in the next few days. I haven t posted any photos of late so I thought I d walk through a few pens and snap some pictures.The first two animals are both sired by Dr. Gonzo.  For those that don t remember, Dr. Gonzo was a crossbred bull that was conceived through a vote on this blog.  The bull (Urbaniste (Montbeliarde) X Impuls (Jersey) X Signature (Brown Swiss) X Holstein) eventually went to Sierra Desert Breeders in California where semen was available for a short time.  I ended up with a total of 13 daughters that have calved or will be calving over the next year.The first one is what I considered to be an ideal mating for Dr. Gonzo, which was on a Scandinavian Red X Holstein dam.  In this case it was a Braut daughter.  At 116 days in milk she was giving 79 lbs/day with a 4.1% fat and 3.2% protein test. Pregnant first service to the Holstein bull Comanche.The second one is a Dr. Gonzo from a Jersey X Holstein dam.  With Dr. Gonzo being from a Jersey sired dam, there is a little more Jersey influence in this heifer.  It is very early on this heifer, but at 21 days in milk she was giving 57 lbs/day with a 3.8% fat and 3.2% protein test.This Redon X Holstein daughter generated considerable discussion in this post last summer.  At that point, she was too tall and frail for some that preferred the shorter and more muscular Fleckvieh daughters in the same post.  Now fresh a second time, this cow is definitely among the tallest of her pen mates.  Where she has added a lot of power and strength is in her back end, more so than her front end.  She has also progressed nicely in production.  At 74 days in milk in her second lactation she is giving 133 lbs/day with a 3.9% fat and 3.1% protein.This is a second lactation Valfin daughter.  She is a result of switching up the three-way rotation the second time through.  She is a Montbeliarde X Holstein (Million) X Swedish Red (B Jurist) X Jersey (Paramount) X Holstein.  You really don t notice any Jersey in the background based on her looks but she is a tick higher fat percentage, like a Montbeliarde X Jersey X Holstein three-way cross. At 98 days in milk she was giving 136 lbs/day with a 4.3% fat and 3.1% protein test.This is my first Foske to reach second lactation.  She is a Foske X Merchant (Jersey) X Holstein.  We are now milking 26 Foske daughters and I am more than happy with them.  I look forward to milking more.  This cow s first lactation yielded 21930 lbs of milk, 909 lbs of fat and 725 lbs of protein in 291 days.  By the looks of her udder, she should have plenty of milk in second lactation.Some people laugh at this cow until they turn around and look at her udder.  She didn t pose well for an udder shot but you can get the idea.  She is a Swiss Simmental (Adi) X Jersey (Juan) X Holstein (Ramos).  She has the body of a beef cow but the udder and production of a dairy cow.  Best of both worlds, no?  Current production in her second lactation is 106 lbs/day with a 4.5% fat and 3.6% protein test at 88 days in milk.  She will be pushing 4% protein later in lactation.As for the Swiss Simmental, I ve actually been pleasantly surprised with the results.  The Adi daughters have some of the better udders I ve seen from any strength breed while production is more middle of the road.  Definite improvement in the second lactation.  I still have some Adi lingering in my semen tank that I will not hesitate to go back to. Braut Bull of the Year 2015For the first time in the history of the Bull of the Year competition, we have a repeat winner.  Congratulations to all involved in making Braut a popular service bull throughout the crossbreeding world.Final Tally:From Geno Global:10177 Braut has been named the most popular bull for breeding in several countries, including the Netherlands, UK and USA, and has more than 280,000 daughters worldwide. He is still alive and producing semen, and has outlived many of his children and grandchildren. He has the most exported Norwegian Red semen of all time (by number of doses) which has been exported to 22 different countries. He remains one of the top bulls on the Total Merit Index list.Born in 2002Braut was born in Jæren, Norway in 2002 to breeders were Torbjørg and Ommun Braut. Today their son Elling Braut runs the family farm which consist of 25 milking Norwegian Red cows, which is the average farm size in Norway. They also raise some pigs.Health and fertilityBraut transmits very easy calving and low stillbirths, high production – both for yield and percentages, high daughter fertility, improved feet and legs, and good udders. Braut also has the added advantage of extremely high fertility as a service sire. Most Norwegian Red sires have a non-return rate at the least 5% higher than Holstein service sires, and Braut is the most fertile of the team!About Norwegian RedWhile the focus for dairy breeding is often on milk production, Norwegian Reds are bred to be in balance and are world-leaders in health and fertility. Since the 1970s, Norway introduced health record for all calves whereby all diseases and treatments were recorded and there was systematic testing for fertility. This has resulted a breed which is one of the healthiest in the world. Veterinary and medical costs are low and Norwegian cows have almost no antibiotic use. They have uncomplicated deliveries, are almost never sick, have good bodies, strong legs, functional udders and a good temperament. In addition to these qualities, they have good milk and meat production.Link to Braut’s proof:http://www.oksekatalogen.no/en/Display-pages/Sire-detail-page/?bullid=10177Link to Geno Global website:http://www.genoglobal.com/ It s that time again Discussion of this topic will take place HEREPrevious winners:Bull of the Year 2014: Triomphe (Montbeliarde)Bull of the Year 2013: Braut (Norwegian Red)Bull of the Year 2012: Papayaou  (Montbeliarde)Bull of the Year 2011: Valfin (Montbeliarde)Voting is simple. To vote, just comment on this post with your top three choices in order.1. First choice2. Second choice3. Third choice.If you feel only one bull is worthy, than you are free to only vote for one. A first choice vote is worth three (3) points, second choice two (2) points and third choice one (1) point.Please put at least a first name or nickname to your vote. Anonymous votes will be thrown out. I will also be monitoring the IP addresses that the votes come from.  If you vote from the same computer as another voter, make a note so I do not throw those votes out.Please refrain from discussion on this post as it will keep things nice and tidy for me to keep a running tally.Thanks for participating and commence the voting! With 2015 coming to a close, I ve compiled the year s test results.  Notes follow the tables.  For last year s production results, click here.2015 TotalsIn last year s post, I set a goal of 90 lbs ECM/day.  We managed to beat that by three pounds.  The overall improvement in energy corrected milk was seven pounds per day.  If only I would have received 2014 s milk price for this year s production!The pure Holstein population was cut in half this year.  While they lead the pace for production, we only freshened one pure Holstein heifer this year.  Crossbred Holsteins look very nice on the mature equivalents.  I do believe that the Holstein sired crossbreds will have the most production potential going forward.  Fantastic results so far on the daughters of high production Holstein bulls like Iota (milking second lactation daughters) and Supersire (still early but they are some the highest producing two year olds).The Montbeliardes and Fleckviehs look to lag behind but those two groups are still majority first lactation animals.  Improvements are definitely there.  We ve recently calved in a fair number of Montbeliardes for the second time and the past two months the Montbeliardes have been over 90 lbs ECM/day.  The second and greater lactation Montbeliardes averaged 101 lbs ECM/day last test and my second lactation Fleckviehs averaged 110 lbs ECM/day.  I look for the numbers on the two breeds to be more in line with the rest as they continue to mature.Compared to other breeds, the Jersey daughters appear to have taken a slight step back this year.  We have had a good number of Jersey sired heifers calve in that have been pretty poor in terms of production.  The older ones are getting up there in age but still milk well.  I still have Jersey heifers and Jersey calves coming through the system but have stopped using Jersey bulls as service sires.Viking Red has 4 lbs/day over the Norwegian Red on the year but Norwegian Red daughters lead the herd in mature equivalents.  In all, 191 animals in my herd are sired by a Red bull of some kind.  Given my results I m pretty confident going forward with Red breeds playing a key role.  Viking and Norwegian Red are interchangeable to me though I find both to have performed better than a lot of the Ayrshires and others that I classify as other Reds.  The best daughters in the Other Red category are from bulls with good Viking Red bulls close up in the pedigree. We will also be freshening our first Aussie Red daughters in 2016.I ve set the goal of reaching 100 lbs ECM/day for the whole herd over a year.  Is it a stretch?  Time will tell.  I ve reached a point where we are constantly bursting at the seams with cows so I can be much more selective with what kind of animal I keep in the herd.  Of course any kind of weather event could impact our feed production.  We will see what 2016 brings and may you all enjoy the New Year! Back in early 2014 I made a post looking at the survival rates for a group of 100 cows born between August 15, 2006 and February 21, 2007.  That group consisted of 51 pure Holsteins and 49 crossbreds of various mixtures (check out the comments on the post for the exact breakdown).  At the time of the post, there were 10 remaining survivors and over the past almost two years, the group has been whittled down to six.  So I thought I d highlight these cows and give some numbers on how they ve performed over their lifetime.  The only one I am not highlighting here is a Swedish Red X Angus X Holstein.  She s still around, though I m not sure why.1829 (B Jurist (Viking Red) x Olympian Jasper (Holstein))Born 10/2/2006Other than fifth lactation, this has been a pretty good cow.  I m not sure if she d have made it through fifth lactation today under current conditions of competition (I m cutting a lot of cows off at 5-6 breedings now).Her daughters have been hit or miss.  A Jersey daughter came down with Johne s, her Illawarra daughter by Royal Treble was recently culled in her third lactation while her Normande daughter by Redondo is going strong into her third lactation.1852 (AltaSuede X AltaMarshall (Pure Holstein))Born 11/14/2006This is the only pure Holstein left out of the bunch.  Her sixth lactation looks like her peak production but she is on her downward slope this lactation and will have a few more months of stale production that will bring this lactation more in line with last.She is a very big cow, one of the biggest in the old cow pen, but she is built well and has plenty of strength to carry her size around.  Her only daughter that reached lactation was a Normande that was culled due to lack of production in first lactation (in other words she was down to no milk at 100 days in milk).1879 (Paramount (Jersey) X Forbidden (Holstein))Born 1/8/2007This has been one of my best Jersey crosses in my time using Jersey and the argument could be made that she s the best cow in the group.  Yesterday she was confirmed pregnant once again so she will see an eighth lactation if she carries to term.  Haven t had much luck with her Red daughters.  One by O Brolin, the other by Safir.  They were both victims of Johne s though I will say that the Safir wasn t much good either way.  I do have a Montbeliarde daughter by Rapallo coming, along with a Swiss Simmental by Adi.  Current pregnancy is to Rurex which I believe to be a good bull for her.1890 (B Jurist (Viking Red) X Manfred (Holstein))Born 1/30/2007The 2015 Cow of the Year is included in this group, though you could make the argument that 1879 should have been my nominee.  That third lactation sticks out like a sore thumb where she aborted (was pregnant on original first service) and took quite a while to get pregnant again.  to her credit, she maintained solid production through the extended lactation and was the reason she did not find herself on a truck.  My patience with her has paid off as she has been a great cow since then.  Obviously she is at peak right now in her sixth lactation but that peak is always a good one with her.I had one daughter sired by Raastad (the mother of the Foske bull I will be collecting semen on).  Unfortunately she was afflicted with hardware earlier this year and died.  I m excited for her Fleckvieh daughter by Ilion and will likely be breeding her to Fleckvieh once again.1893 (Lars (Viking Red) X Hillcrest (Holstein))Born 2/11/2007A pretty steady cow, not my best and not my worst.  Second lactation was definitely extended but she showed some great persistency in that it was also her best daily production of her lifetime.  A case of mastitis in her fourth lactation probably put a little dent in her production ability but she has been able to maintain decent production since then.  Only once has she settled on her first service and she has never gotten pregnant under 100 days in milk.  Her somatic cell count is always a little questionable. But she always finds a way to stick around.Only one daughter has made it to lactation, a Norwegian Red by Sand.  That daughter is probably one of my best Red Absorption cows.  She is in her third lactation and has given me a few daughters of her own to continue this little experiment with the Red breeds.

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