Certainly some very nice and scenic pictures townfarmer.
cowpollinator wrote:
AllForage wrote:
So do I, wish I could find a few cows like that here in the states.
Just about every semen company out there has montbelaird semen available if you ask.
The pictures of the white-face cattle if they were in Switzerland are Simmental and if they were in Germany they would be Fleckvieh.
There is a difference. Starting in 1830 original Simmentaler cattle from Switzerland were imported to the Bavarian Kingdom and to former Austria to improve the local dual purpose breeds. At these times the Simmental cattle were famous for their milk production and draught capacity, but were late maturing with little depth and coarse bones.
In 1920 the herdbook in Southern Germany was closed and Fleckvieh was developed as an independent breed. The breeding aims were focused on a "middle of the road type animal" with excellent muscling, good milk production and draught performance.
The Montbeliarde breed is French. The Montbeliarde breed belongs to the Jurassic branch (descended from Bos Frontosus) which the group of Pie Rouge breeds stems from. It therefore belongs to the Simmental and Fleckvieh families. The Montbeliarde has also injected Red Holstein breeding into the breed, which contributes to its darker red coloring.
There are 2 groups of breeders of Fleckvieh cattle, there is a beef group (which of course focuses on the beef production) at
http://www.fleckvieh.com and then there are those that are focusing more on the dairy production ( which we as a registry represent)
http://www.dairycattleregistry.com. When it comes to production, we have a member who has had a 2 yr old Fleckvieh produce 106lbs of milk on official DHI test.
Also on our website we have links to more than 80 Fleckvieh bulls and also over 70 Montbeliarde bulls.
