Cows, calves and veterinary

Dairy Exporter May 2007, pg 103 Looking at herd testing statistics for the 2005/06 season shows a remarkable fact.

Bill Montgomerie goes on to explain that there are substantial differences otherwise between the breeds - percentage MS component of the milk, liveweight, protein/fat production. Income per cow is similar, feed efficiency of the crossbred slightly higher.

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Now if Jersey cows had been included, this discussion could have got really interesting.

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In the end, breed selection often comes down to personal preference (or what's available). I chose to farm crossbreds for their hybrid vigour (which in itself has a positive effect on health, production and fertility), medium size for less pasture damage / maintenance feed requirement, and high milksolids component.

Most of my farming experience has been with Friesian cattle, and my first calves came from one of those farms (Kat's Delight is the three year old pictured above).

The following year I was buying calves and was lucky to get a full line of crossbreds from a long-established crossbred herd. Number 50 (J12F4) pictured above is one of these, and she's a soppy dolt who stands at the end of the pit watching milking every day and has to be pushed aside every time the gate is opened.

The following year I again asked for crossbred calves but what the stock agent came up with was Jerseys, with a few crossbreds in amongst. Meantime, LIC has created a brand new breed called Kiwicross, capturing the benefits of the crossbreed, to either move towards a pure, true-breeding animal, add a modicum of hybrid vigour to the herd or gain the advantages of the crossbred without the calving difficulty associated with crossing large bulls over small cows.

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When buying cows, again I was looking for crossbreds but with limited time ended up buying a line of Jerseys and Jersey crosses at a herd dispersal three weeks before the start of the new season.

The few cows I added later were also Jerseys.

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As a consequence, there's a complete mix of all three (both) breeds in my herd; from pure Friesian to pure Jersey and everything in between. My plan for the future is to keep it that way, while introducing a third breed to maintain hybrid vigour.

I chose Brown Swiss to use across the first crosses, because the indexes for everything that's not Jersey/Friesian are pathetic whichever breed you choose and Brown Swiss is a breed I've worked with before. They have very good temperament, high protein components, are hardy, dual-purpose and strong feet and legs. The bull I used last year has a BW of zero.

Crossbreds that are less than a quarter of any one breed can be bred back to that breed without much loss of hybrid vigour. My breeding plan is basically - Friesian (10/16 or over) crossed to Jersey, Jersey (10/16 or over) to Friesian, first cross to Brown Swiss and all first-calvers and very petite cows to Jersey.

The primary aim is to maximise hybrid vigour while minimising calving difficulty.

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Because every farmer has a different aim in his breeding program, no single policy will suit everyone, any more than any one breed meets every farmer's criteria. For me, hybrid vigour supersedes BW and dairy type supercedes production figures (most of the bulls marketed have production figures far exceeding the average cow, so it's not something I select strongly on since the AB company has already dropped out the non-performers where production is concerned).

Since my programme effectively matches individual cows to individual bulls, it's also more complex than most farmers would choose.

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This is the first year I'd worked with Jerseys, and so far as the best of them go, you couldn't find a nicer cow. Having heard bad things about their temperament (not true in my herd), I'm now completely happy to maintain the very light reds and browns that currently dominate the herd by continuing to breed pure-breds each year. It's also said that they're harder to rear to maturity, no doubt I'll discover the truth or otherwise of that in time.

It's also an advantage to keep a few pure Friesians for those magnificent first-cross animals (without any worry about calving difficulty) and to flush the milking plant out at the end of milking... every herd needs those. (Interestingly enough, I do have a Friesian who consistently stands in the last place every milking). With only 12 Friesians in the whole herd (nine of the original calves plus one pure for every line of heifers '04 through '06) it's anyone's guess where those Friesians are going to come from.

Older farmers have consistently told me that the first cross is a magnificent animal but the later crosses (3/4 bred) are useless (in comparison). By three-way crossing, I hope to capitalise on the potential of hybrid vigour.

I suspect the complexity of the system and the low indexes of the non-dominant breeds are the main reason why few farmers use three-way crossing. I worked briefly with a herd that successfully used Ayshire as a third cross.

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On the other hand, having been catching up with the outputs of agrijournalism it has come to my attention that people no longer require food for survival.

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He's not the only person who said this in the latest crop of journalism, but Mick Keogh gets the latest 'stupid quote of the day' prize:

The second was that the world needed food - no longer true.

Glenys Christian no doubt had good reason for inserting scare quotes around the word "myths".

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First person to devise a plan for survival without food gets cyber chocolate (note, it's not allowed to involve I/V infusion of energy substances created in a laboratory; that counts as food).

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To put a bit more context to that quote, Keogh's point was that people are buying not just commodities, but value-added products. He walks into an affluent super-market and discovers that they offer customers a choice from thirty-two types of eggs and a dozen types of milk.

The lucrative markets have moved on from "food", interpreted as the basic, commodity item. Affluent people, he tells us, are not buying food based on their need to survive - they buy for taste, brand, ethics, nutritional and health-giving properties.

Coupled with this is the increase in food production by developing countries. What Keogh is commenting on is a change in the balance of the market, not (as a brief glance at the article might have suggested) that humanity has made a biological breakthrough and can now survive without nutritional input. Rather, humanity is more fussy about that nutritional input and that creates niche markets which producers can anticipate, recognise, and supply for.

Simply supplying a product for its intrinsic value and expecting it to be welcomed in the market isn't good enough any more (I disagree with this part of the statement, but my disagreement is no part of the point he was making*).

Value-add is the way of the future.

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*My disagreement is based on two things - firstly, this argument is tailored to a world full of affluent people with access to supermarkets, which supermarkets have access to a wide range of niche products.

This doesn't represent so much as a majority of the world's population.

Even in supposedly 'affluent' countries there are large numbers of people struggling to survive on the income they can bring home. Perhaps they would like to partake of the array of value-add products - they can't. Their immediate need is for 'food' - the low-priced commodity products they are able to afford.

While people *are* starving the basic nutritional value of commodity food cannot be over-looked.

As milk producers, our product is marketed across nations, across classes and affluence bands. So colostrum pills are reaching the upper classes and milk powder is carried to the homes of the lower income families. Financially it isn't helpful to market to the affluent and ignore the poor, ethically it isn't helpful. And suggesting that the world, as a whole, has no need of 'food' as a cheap, commodity product simply isn't true.

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My second point of disagreement was simply that too large a move away from the production of a basic nutritionally sound product into niche markets depends on the whole infrastructure remaining in place, affluence increasing etc.

Effectively, it depends on peace-time and content.

We don't have that.