Homebred Dairy bulls

[regolith]

Not offering a "guess the breed" I think even I'd have a task working back through the generations. So I can tell you straight up the white face on that top bull comes from his maternal grandsire who is Abondance breed. His mother is more or less 50% Abondance 50% Jersey, his sire is another homebred bull that I'll call "Ayrshire" - Ayrshire sired out of a Swedish Red sired cow who was out of a HolsteinFriesian/Jersey crossbred cow. Born last November. Planning to turn him in with my milkers from mid-February to breed the November/December calved cows and any that didn't get in calf during spring mating. He crosses my E family (maternal) with my H family (paternal) in the herd.

The younger bull was born last April, Brown Swiss sire by AI. His mother is part of a crossbred breeding project and her breed mix would be approximately 50% Ayrshire, 3/8ths Jersey, 1/8ths Brown Swiss. Her son fits into the project requirements but being over 50% Brown Swiss will be too high a calving difficulty to turn in with the milking herd. Will be either planning for on-farm collection to use by AI, or drafting for individual matings.

At this point quite a lot of the herd has homebred bulls in the background. You win some, you lose some. The daughters are perfectly good dairy cows some have poorer udders in general than their AI-sired cohorts. I have to take care of strength in breeding suitable cows for the farm so haven't been able to raise Jersey bulls with the required constitution... not having access to more than one good all-round AI Jersey bull who can deliver sufficient strength, naturally the daughters of the homebred Jersey bulls are also lacking in that area.

 

[regolith]

He hasn't done this before but last night was quite adamant that he intended to get close to the photographer... I'm not worried about either his expression or body language at this point but he *will* be trained to keep a respectful distance or he won't be doing a lot of breeding here.



So I was thinking about a family of cows... a week or three ago when my keyboard wasn't working (it still isn't working my sister gave me a usb keyboard to use for now) that were lacking in three areas of breeding but just fine in two.

And realised. As farmers selecting AI sires based on their daughter traits there are probably 20 - 30 individual traits to monitor. but it all boils down to five. And within those five, they are inter-related so one of the five will support another (health = production; strength = health; health = nice behaviour)
And yes, it is said that the more traits you select for the less progress you make.
But a good balanced cow has to be good in all five. And it shouldn't be hard, once you've got all five working together, to keep them for generation after generation.
Except this is the problem I have with buying sires for AI use. They have three of the five, two of the five; on looking through the catalogues I might reject 95% because of a serious deficit in one or more of those five traits. Someone who is selecting sires to sell to NZ dairy farmers does *not* think they are all important (either imported sires or selected matings from the top cows within NZ).

Production
Body type
Health
Fertility
Temperament.

For dairy cows.

For body type the key is functional for purpose - sufficient strength for grazing, balanced with dairy enough to partition energy to milk not fat. Legs they can walk long distances or up and down hills on, udders that hold the milk out of the way of their hocks, capacity and big mouths making room for all the organs *plus* grass *plus* calf.

 

[Ky hills]

Nice looking bulls. When I had nurse cows raising calves, I once got the idea to keep a couple bull calves intact and use them for breeding. I kept a Holstein and 3/4 Jersey 1/4 Holstein.
I think I may have turned them out for a brief time, but sold them pretty fast as they were both getting very aggressive,

 

[regolith]

Nice looking bulls. When I had nurse cows raising calves, I once got the idea to keep a couple bull calves intact and use them for breeding. I kept a Holstein and 3/4 Jersey 1/4 Holstein.
I think I may have turned them out for a brief time, but sold them pretty fast as they were both getting very aggressive,

I generally only use bulls at 15 - 18 months old then beef them. A lot of them get a bit stroppy at around 2 years, anything showing signs of being aggressive earlier... about 6 - 12 months when their behaviour starts to get bullish - might not get used at all.
My first project bull was the exception. I had *intentions* of drafting quite a number of nice cows out to him as they came on heat. In the end, I put him in a paddock with three dairy heifers and five beefcross heifers for six weeks, drafted in a total of three dairy cows during that time and had a heck of a job getting those cows safely out again. I got three sons and three daughters from that bull. I'd decided his own behaviour wasn't an indicator of how his progeny would behave, and it doesn't seem to have been since I used two of those sons as bulls, and milked all three of the daughters.

 

[farmerjan]

Sweedish and Norweigan Reds were used here in several herds I tested when the "grazing" craze took hold... to be followed by the ones that went to all confinement... Most every one uses AI exclusively... which is not hard if the cows are in confinement or only allowed out on grass for a few hours . One breed that I liked were Montebeliardes'... nice beefy animals that held their flesh, milked pretty good and had good butterfat.. One farm used them on a group of cows and they settled well... calves were not overly large and they got fat quick and grew... he has switched back to all holstein and a few jerseys, but they are all bred AI... Also he used some Normande on his cows. They also milked pretty good and were much beefier than the holsteins. They both are touted to be good legs and feet for getting around and supposed to do well on grazing type dairies.
Some of the farms that do use a cleanup bull now use mostly angus... the black calves as baby calves, bring in the $800-1500 range... for a 3 day old baby calf .... holstein bull calves in the 100 lb range are over $1000. It's totally crazy...
I would think you might be able to get some of these breeds in semen to use to breed a few to maybe get a bull calf or 2 to raise up???

 

[farmerjan]

Swiss are popular here with some farmers... I am not a real big fan. They are too moody and stubborn for me... plus it takes too long for the steers to "finish" for eating... I like the jerseys for smaller size... the steers make good beef... most of the cows I have had are pretty good dispositioned... My very favorite cow is the older style guernsey, but they are nearly non-existent... having been bred too fine and "dairyish" that they have lost all the qualities of being a "tough" old farmstead type cow. They now are hard breeders, calves are frail.. and want to die more than want to live. It is a shame how the push for more milk and more "dairy type" has destroyed that old standard breed.
95% of the cows I milk test are holsteins , with a few farms having some jerseys, and a couple having some swiss... one has some real nice swiss they show... There are alot of red and white holsteins here and they are as good or better than some of the black and whites.
The crosses are more popular on the seasonal/grazing type farms... there are a few of them but mostly the younger generations don't want to milk so they have slowly been sold off and farmers went to beef.

 

[farmerjan]

I like the first red and white bull.

 

[regolith]

The white face bull did about three weeks with the cows, most that cycled cycled in the first two weeks.
So far, two returns out of twenty-some bred. He was 18-months old, has now been shipped.

I've kept three younger bulls from this year's line, one is a red and white, full brother to the white-face bull's sire. One polled Jersey cross (about 3/4 Jersey) and one Angus cross with Normande.
The sire of these two, at 14 months he bred about 17 cows in the dairy herd over three weeks, and 14 held. An excellent result.
It looks as if his son has repeated that feat.

And that made me wonder. When there are "clean-up bulls" all across NZ achieving 50 - 60% pregnancy rates at best, on observed heats.
Have I got an astounding genetic line that can achieve 80% plus and should be kept going...
Or on a farm level, have we somehow solved the reasons why other farms get low conception rates to live cover?

One year I had about 20 uncastrated bull calves, two of which were project bulls, one was a polled Jersey (he turned out to be both low fertility and heterozygous polled - just enough calves arrived to prove he carried the Pp genes, like both his parents) and the sire of the white face bull was a fourth. I decided not to do AI the following spring. Instead, I drafted cows at milking time when they were showing clear signs of heat and put them in one of three or four small paddocks, then fetched the bull mob in and drafted them out to their respective cows. The bulls were 14 to 15 months old. The father of the red and white bull I used again at 17 - 18 months old for later calvers and open cows, before shipping him for beef.
It was an interesting time. Mostly the bulls cooperated extremely well. I learned not to try drafting bulls in the hours of darkness.
There were days I would walk to the gate, make eye contact with one of the bulls and say, "I've got work. For you." and open the gate and the bull would leave his mates and come.
Another day that method wasn't effective; I brought the whole group into the yards to draft and the bulls I wanted continued to act dumb and tussle with each other so I got bulls with the cows, but not the ones I wanted. My beef cross cow ended up going with a Jersey bull that day, while the beef cross bulls carried on play-fighting in the yard.
After three weeks I was tired of drafting, picked a bull and put him in with the herd. He did 8 days, then I swapped him out for another, first bull decided he wasn't tired after all and jumped back in a day later.
The conception rate is the real story. Those first three weeks drafting cows and drafting bulls achieved around 40% pregnancy rates.
The second three weeks, with a bull running with the herd, the remaining non-pregnant cows got in-calf at the rate of 80%
I personally feel that is probably because the timing was off, and that in drafting at milking times many cows were at the ideal time for AI but had been through standing heat already.

But it also suggests that any healthy bull is capable of achieving 80% plus pregnancies over dairy cows in a 3-week period and that the bulls I have that have achieved that aren't a special genetic line.
However those bulls I ran with the herd after three weeks of drafting - they were related to the Red and White bull above. Not as close as father/son or halfsib but all are linked through the cow Carmelglen Brigitte.