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S.C. Wisconsin | One of the major reasons we tried crossbreeding is that that it's not a secret that fertility has really gone south on holsteins. I have witnessed that in my 40 years of dairying. A couple of years ago I went to a meeting on fertility and the speaker showed a graph on Holstein that confirmed my belief. In fact if he stated that if we stay on this course for the next 20 years there will be no cows getting pregnant. The holstein people promote tall angular cows which is definitely not a trait to long life. A good example was a bull called Bellwood Marshal. When the heifers freshened form this bull I stated they look nice didn't think they would last. I was right and they had bad fertilty problems on top of it. The reasons the Holsteins have a lot of days in milk is that they have fertility problems. My idea is to have a fresh crossbred milking rather than a stale Holstein that took 250 days to get pregnant. We get paid on components so components are important to us. One other point crossbreeding is alot more work studying bulls and making sure your crosses are correct.Also I think it's more important to use the best genetic's available for crossbreeds. Some people and studies have used low end bulls or jumper bulls with bad results. This might not be for everybody, but I thought I would share our results. Everybody has their beliefs and I accept that. | |
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my sons crossbreeding blog
