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| Though I'm moving away from the pure Holstein breed, I did utilize and pay good money for genomic young sires and will continue to utilize genomic young sires even in my crossbreeding program. I've got several pregnancies to a genomic Normande sire even. The thing is I don't get out of control with one single bull and most importantly I take pedigree into affect. The theory is like begets like and I feel confident in certain pedigrees. When Freddie first came out with no daughters I used him with confidence as I liked both my O Man and Die-Hard daughters and it was a pedigree that made sense for what I was looking for (health and fitness) as both O Man and Die-Hard are well-proven bulls for health and fitness traits.
Where I think we get into potentially sticky situations is now that we're getting sons of sons that don't have daughters yet and such. Even sons of bulls that only have around 100 daughters are subject to fluctuation as their sire's second crop comes in. I bought ten units of a bull Wilton because his genomic proof had him at +4.0 DPR last proof. His sire (Active) had a very high DPR proof too but as more daughters came in this past proof it took a big hit. Wilton's genomic DPR went down with it to +2.7. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Wilton will still be a good transmitter for daughter fertility but part of my problem with Holsteins is that it'll take extremely high DPR bulls to get the fertility thing moving forward now that the backwards trend has been halted.
I'm pretty sure the progress being made by genomics is being overestimated. But I think especially on the female side that advocating testing all your heifers and getting rid of the bottom whatever percent is pretty brash. You're going to miss out on some potentially good ones. I haven't tested any heifers genomics that I have, but DHIA told me one of my heifers was negative $NM in their genetic selection guide. One that should be culled before even given a chance. I'm sure she'd have poor genomics too. But I knew better because of the family she came from. She calved at two years old and went on to make over 37,700 lbs in 359 days. It still takes some cow sense, as I'd be missing out on one heck of a cow if I only looked at theoretical numbers. | |
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genomics
