Udder quality

[dun]

Saw an excellent example of how easy it is to screw up udders. I milked at hte dairy this morning and a whole bunch of heifers had rear teats that grew so close together that the touched for their entire length.
He's he story. They had an excellent high milking cow with great conformation except for one small problesm. Here rear teats were so close together they touched for their entire length. She was AIed to an excellent bull and had a bull calf that they kept for breeding. hat bulls daughters are just entering production this year and sure enough, every one of them has the same teat structure. hey kept another bull out of a different cow sired by the same bull and the teats of his daughters are well spaced. It will be interesting to see how many generations it will take to breed those screwed up teats out of the herd.

 

[jkwilson]

Faster to cull them out

 

[rkm]

Hate milking cows that the teats are too wide in the front or close in the back. Drives you crazy trying put the milkers on and then keeping them on. But if you used the right bull couldn't breed it out in one generation?

 

[jkwilson]

Hate milking cows that the teats are too wide in the front or close in the back. Drives you crazy trying put the milkers on and then keeping them on. But if you used the right bull couldn't breed it out in one generation?

My experience has always been that the desirable trait you are trying to keep will go away, and the bad trait you want to get rid of will be passed on, no matter what you breed to. Or it sure seems that way.

 

[dun]

Hate milking cows that the teats are too wide in the front or close in the back. Drives you crazy trying put the milkers on and then keeping them on. But if you used the right bull couldn't breed it out in one generation?

My experience has always been that the desirable trait you are trying to keep will go away, and the bad trait you want to get rid of will be passed on, no matter what you breed to. Or it sure seems that way.

Tha is pretty much what I've experienced. It's a lot faster to screw something up then it is to eliminate it once you have it. Almost seems that since heifers and bulls are born 50:50 that the good udder 50 must go to the bulls and the bad udder 50 ends up on the heifers. Maybe that's one of Murphys lesser known laws of genetics.
Generally it seems that udders are the hardest to improve and the easiest to make a mess of. Could be that it's so much more obvious then other traits like bad feet, or weak topline, etc.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

that the biggest reason i had rather see the bull's moma. even over his sire if given only one choice

 

[rkm]

When we bred reg. holsteins, once in a while a bull would come along that could make big improvement in one generation. Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation comes to mind. But I would not use him to improve this problem, some of his daughters that we had were a little snug with rear teat placement.

 

[Santas and Duhram Reds]

Alacowman is right here. If you want a preview of you future cows, look at your bull's dam