Holstein World:  What are your thoughts regarding the incorporation of crossbreeding in a herd’s breeding program?

Russ Wirt:  This seems like a no brainer, but than I have become quite prejudice with the success our dairy has enjoyed with Holstein genetics.

Our breed does have some calving ease and fertility problem.  But like Blads and CVM, we have put in place programs to correct the problem.  We did not develop the problem all of a sudden and will not correct it in one mating.

We have bred such will into the Holstein cow that when she is at maximum milk production, she is unable to meet her nutrient needs.  To that we add technology that even asks her to do more.  With 2-year-olds reaching 100 pounds and more, and than needing additional energy to continue to reach mature weight, there is little wonder why we have a negative nutrient balance.

It seems to me one must decide how big a hit on milk production and value of the veal calf a commercial dairyman is willing to take, if he is willing to use inferior genetics in his breeding program.

Talking to semen salesmen, it sounds to me like we are now seeing less sales of semen to use in cross breeding in Minnesota herds.  I am told Minnesota leads the nation in AI used for cross breeding.  I believe in most cases time will prove this to be an unwise decision.

Just yesterday, I was told by our dairy nutritionist about one of his herds that used cross breeding and now the sacrifice in milk production he is experiencing.  This dairyman does not understand why his cows are not milking like they used too.  Some of the very large herds in southeast Minnesota have now switched back to using all Holstein semen.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 8:17 am by kknutsen and is filed under Guest Blogger Series. Hits for this post:1212 You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.