by Taurus:
For some strange reason I never seen Aryshire cattle around here, what's the issue with them? I seen more Dutch Belted cattle than Aryshire.....
Ayrshire cattle are listed among the list of breed that are on the endangered list by the Livestock Conservancy. Ayrshire is a dairy breed. For the most part, those who have Ayrshire are dedicated breeders to the breed, which is fine, and these people are a vital part to representing the breed.
We feel that what has more of an impact of the success, failure, or use of many of these breeds has to do partly with the breed registry or lack thereof. Also after some of the breed associations were formed, dissension tore many apart because of the direction that a few wanted to take the breed or rules that they wanted to impose. Some of these breeds still lack organization and are unable and unwilling to do EPD's on their breed no matter how well they can perform and could contribute to the beef industry.
If you look at the beef industry as a whole, what color are they today? BLACK!!! Why? Because of the pressure and promotion of the Angus breed. Pick up any sale catalog today and any of the Continental breeds, it is almost impossible to find a purebred animal of any breed.
by cow pollinator:
I've seen some information on the Normandes that looked pretty good but I'd get killed on the spots here.
In France, the Normande has a program similar to the Angus CAB here in the US.
Other factors that affect some breeds or availability is disease and/or the home country of these breeds. Some breeds are unable to have semen or embryos imported into the US because of various diseases. Some bulls have semen that gets imported into the US and then on later test end up testing positive later, ending exports of semen. Schmallenberg, is one such disease in the European Union.
Another factor is that some of the foreign breed societies and groups, while they want to export semen, do not want any breed associations formed for breeders to register these breeds and try to prevent this from happening.
The semen, in the early years of the US breeding to these breeds was that in Europe, many of these countries had a socialistic approach to breeding. If an outstanding female was discovered, then the breed society would tell the owner what he was going to breed the cow to and if it was a bull, which bull stud would take possession. Some of this still is true today. In earlier years, these breed societies would take all of the young sires and collect 5-10,000 units of semen and then the bulls were slaughtered. When the offspring of these bulls were evaluated, then the very top end of these bulls were selected to be further used in the herds. The semen on the other bulls was disposed of.
When we started importing semen from some of these breeds into the US, the semen that we received was those of the "reject" bulls. While some of them may have still been good animals, other had issues with various traits, disposition being one of them, but the US was hungry for using these new breeds and didn't care.
Today, still in the European countries, an breeders in not allowed to use an A.I. bull on more that 10-15% of the herd. With this limiting factor, they have less inbreeding in their breeds than we do here in the US. Here if a bull becomes popular, no matter what breed it is, everyone wants to use him.
What is different is that our registries were not created as other registries were with a group of breeders deciding to band together and form an association. We started the Composite Beef Cattle Registry because we were seeing animals that were unable to register with many of the registries because of the breed percentage or the herd books were closed. With the Composite Beef Cattle Registry, we were able to get an export certificate approved by the Russian Federation and then we provided registration and export certificates to over 200 head of Hereford animals that were exported to farmers in Russia.
The Composite Dairy Cattle Registry came about as the result of new rules of another registry and their unwillingness to represent members in the manner in which an association should. Through our perseverance and working with other groups, we are having an impact not only in North America (US and Canada) but Internationally as well. We have members in the US and Canada and have recently had breeders join from the UK and are in correspondence with other countries where groups are interested in becoming an affiliate of ours. The common theme we hear from them is that "their is strength in numbers".
We just came back from attending the World Dairy Expo. We had the opportunity to visit with some of these semen companies from overseas, and as the Composite Dairy Cattle Registry, and Composite Beef Cattle Registry, they are beginning to open their eyes to see that with breeders and producers having the option of registering their animals, their sales of semen are increasing. A common question from them is what can we do to help? What do you need from us? Cross breeding has been so downplayed in the dairy industry and other breeds try to discredit these breeds. But facts speak for themselves and the breeds that we represent continue to grow and are showing that they can compete with or outproduce the traditional dairy breeds.
We have been able to move into the age of genomics with our "Red" breeds and so far the genomic results we are seeing we are way out in front and above those of the Ayrshire.
Other facts, is that on the August dairy proofs, on the Elite Cow List, the breeds that we represent continue to grow and our breeds made up over 60% of the animals excluding Holstein and Jersey. But, the top animal on Net Merit $ in every breed was a crossbred animal.
