Dairy Chit Chat- Please read Mod note in post #1

mahoney_j

freedominacup wrote: »

Genomic or daughter proven? Do you look at linear profiles at all?

All genomic,I havnt looked at linears up to this year but now that production and sokids is reaching where I want I will be paying more attention .like bp I don't want a big pointy cow ,the strong British freisan base in my herd from years ago was a big advantage when I started using hols

mahoney_j

mf240 wrote: »

What kind of total meal are you feeding if you don't mind me asking.

Just over 1.2 t ,over fed last year as gave too much time mikeing around with fty .my end goal is 8 k ltrs ,650 kg solids from grass and 1.5 t meal

mahoney_j

Mooooo wrote: »

Could be your management pushing them beyond what is considered their genetic potential too.

Don't think in doing anything overly special ,big effort to keep grass covers right and herd health would be very good .full vaccination programs and milk and dung screened at various times of year I do have a keen interest in the breeding side and after that it's just luck

Mooooo

Like everything in life it's doing the simple things right and everything should else should follow. A bit overextended here the last few years but hopefully within 2 or 3 years should be more on top of my game as things come together

yewtree

blackdog1 wrote: »

Think your a bit low in milk kg myself. 150 is minus in most European countries. You'd nearly want to be up to +300 kg to maintain 7500 litre cow herd.

Is fertility not a much better way of maintaining/improving herd yeild in spring calving systems. The potential to produce extra milk isn't much good if empty rate increases and six week calving rate decreases.
Think the strength of the EBI is it helps to identify cows most suitable for Irish production systems. There isnt much pasture based dairying in Europe,

blackdog1

mahoney_j wrote:

+115 kg milk delievered over 7 k litres here last year with 532 kg solids.300 kg average milk would drive production too high give lower sokids% and most likely lead to infertility ontop of more meal needed .the 150 kg I used was minimum highest milk kg was 320

Ah k thought it was average. Most people use a lower milk higher fertility on big producing cows who might not go in calf as quick as youd like. really horses for courses with breeding

blackdog1

yewtree wrote:

Is fertility not a much better way of maintaining/improving herd yeild in spring calving systems. The potential to produce extra milk isn't much good if empty rate increases and six week calving rate decreases. Think the strength of the EBI is it helps to identify cows most suitable for Irish production systems. There isnt much pasture based dairying in Europe,

Management is key to fertility. Feed high producing cows properly and they'll go in calf the same as any other. Problem is you need very good nutritional skills in high yielding herds not just good herd management. I also believe feed to yield is essential if chasing a fertile 8000k cow.

yewtree

blackdog1 wrote: »

Management is key to fertility. Feed high producing cows properly and they'll go in calf the same as any other. Problem is you need very good nutritional skills in high yielding herds not just good herd management. I also believe feed to yield is essential if chasing a fertile 8000k cow.

Agree on management but there is genetic variation between bulls for fertility traits. Some Bulls will produce daughters that are more fertile. My point is that solely focusing on production will lead breeding back down the path of where it went The 1990s.
Breeding for fertility is also breeding for production. A more fertile cow will produce more over her lifetime and a more fertile herd will also be a more mature/productive herd as there will be less heifers(producing 70% of a mature cow)

whelan2

The whole thing can be knocked on the head by a disease outbreak, no breeding plan will allow for that

Timmaay

mahoney_j wrote: »

+115 kg milk delievered over 7 k litres here last year with 532 kg solids.300 kg average milk would drive production too high give lower sokids% and most likely lead to infertility ontop of more meal needed .the 150 kg I used was minimum highest milk kg was 320

Know a chap with zero kg for milk, all total compact spring (likes of 80% in 3wk), feeds the likes of 300kg meal, dries everything in early Dec, but still delivers 6500l/cow. His main trick seems to be the fact that he's stocked at 3.9, and buffer feeds high quality wraps much of the year, when grass is plentyful he'll still have a kg or so of silage on offer to the cows, whichever ones want to can pick at it coming out of the parlour. That sounds like the ideal target here for me, I try to avoid breeding anything over 150kg of milk, and have a decent few coming through with the likes of 50kg etc. I've had one or two heifers with the likes of 400kg of milk come through the system the last yr or so, pure HOs, they usually get culled very quickly, and just can't handle the pace here unfortunately.

mahoney_j

Timmaay wrote: »

Know a chap with zero kg for milk, all total compact spring (likes of 80% in 3wk), feeds the likes of 300kg meal, dries everything in early Dec, but still delivers 6500l/cow. His main trick seems to be the fact that he's stocked at 3.9, and buffer feeds high quality wraps much of the year, when grass is plentyful he'll still have a kg or so of silage on offer to the cows, whichever ones want to can pick at it coming out of the parlour. That sounds like the ideal target here for me, I try to avoid breeding anything over 150kg of milk, and have a decent few coming through with the likes of 50kg etc. I've had one or two heifers with the likes of 400kg of milk come through the system the last yr or so, pure HOs, they usually get culled very quickly, and just can't handle the pace here unfortunately.

Stocked at 3.9 ,300 kg meal and 6500 ltrs delievered sounds a bit far fetched Tim but fair play if achieving it .for me outside of genetics the key to high milk and sokids delievered in spring milk is compact calving >80% 6 weeks

jaymla627

mahoney_j wrote: »

Throw us outta few of these pli Bulls

Lavaman, pesky,pello, legend, acres eight, eldweiss, delta gravity, dragon and my personal favourite and proper old school patron spock, would love a herd of spock cows, still have a few left in the flask

freedominacup

yewtree wrote: »

Agree on management but there is genetic variation between bulls for fertility traits. Some Bulls will produce daughters that are more fertile. My point is that solely focusing on production will lead breeding back down the path of where it went The 1990s.
Breeding for fertility is also breeding for production. A more fertile cow will produce more over her lifetime and a more fertile herd will also be a more mature/productive herd as there will be less heifers(producing 70% of a mature cow)

Ebi is a very narrow index and apparently completely disregards type as some sort of smoke and mirrors. Imo bulls haven't anything like as much to do with fertility as the guys who bring us ebi would have you believe. We sold out our original herd ten years ago. Six cow families covered a huge percentage of the herd well over 50% with a lot of others having ones and twos. The six families would have multiple generations calving within days of each other year in year out. Ebi takes no account of this but apparently reaches back into a cows sire line and penalizes them based on who their third/fourth sire was. I've been told that some of the importers are looking at getting a quantitive geneticist to examine the methodology used to produce ebi figures as they regularly don't seem to add up.

freedominacup

jaymla627 wrote: »

Lavaman, pesky,pello, legend, acres eight, eldweiss, delta gravity, dragon and my personal favourite and proper old school patron spock, would love a herd of spock cows, still have a few left in the flask

Snap. More or less. Haven't used Spock for a while. I'd pay good money for 50/60 gibbon straws if they could be got. He put a serious base of solid cows in here twenty odd years ago. Built like tanks and last forever.

pedigree 6

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516151612.htm

Now if someone could tell me the methionine levels in various diets?
Instead of a supplement.
We know the too much protein link to infertility.
But here's a new one.;)

Mooooo

I think the biggest issue is the genomics, or more the fact that bulls with 99% proofs will become rarer and rarer. Now I've use them myself extensively but there aren't these big jumps in performance one expects by paper anyway. We were cleared out back in 2000 and dad had ai'd for as long as it was around and I remember reading out the recording sheets to the valuer with many cows at the 3.8 to 4% p for the lactation and majority over 7k litres. The bulls used back then you knew exactly what you were getting, and could act accordingly on each cow now it's more up in the air. I'd like to see updates on each year of genomic bulls as more info comes in there should be a lot there now on the byj's and other early ones and see how they stack up to the figures at the time. real recorded figures for fert etc. I spose I could look it up but for every bull you'd be a fair bit of time at it. Icbf should do it

yewtree

freedominacup wrote: »

Ebi is a very narrow index and apparently completely disregards type as some sort of smoke and mirrors. Imo bulls haven't anything like as much to do with fertility as the guys who bring us ebi would have you believe. We sold out our original herd ten years ago. Six cow families covered a huge percentage of the herd well over 50% with a lot of others having ones and twos. The six families would have multiple generations calving within days of each other year in year out. Ebi takes no account of this but apparently reaches back into a cows sire line and penalizes them based on who their third/fourth sire was. I've been told that some of the importers are looking at getting a quantitive geneticist to examine the methodology used to produce ebi figures as they regularly don't seem to add up.

Not sure what you mean by EBi being a narrow index. If fertility is so hard to bred for what do you put down the improvement in fertility in national herd down to? After all the same lads are managing the cows yet calving interval and survival are improving year on year.
The highest type cows in the US are lasting the shortest time. Some type traits are important but a lot are irrelevant particularly around fertility. What type traits are important for breeding a fertile cow?
Your last point on the methodology of the ebi is frankly nonsense. The methodology behind the ebi is published in international scientific journals. What do you think the geneticist in icbf are doing?

blackdog1

Ireland would not be so high in the fertility stakes if we stopped using stock Bulls...most of the European countries like France and Germany use only Ai. The US burn out cows because they push them too much. On pads all their life no exercise just pumped full of feed.
Ebi is flawed because it was based on a Nz system and it will take time to adjust to be an Irish system. I actually like the Pli system too find it more balanced but then again I'm a winter milker so suits me a bit better.

Buford T. Justice XIX

yewtree wrote: »

Agree on management but there is genetic variation between bulls for fertility traits. Some Bulls will produce daughters that are more fertile. My point is that solely focusing on production will lead breeding back down the path of where it went The 1990s.
Breeding for fertility is also breeding for production. A more fertile cow will produce more over her lifetime and a more fertile herd will also be a more mature/productive herd as there will be less heifers(producing 70% of a mature cow)

As a friend of mine says, days-in-milk. Calve early, calve often.

jaymla627

freedominacup wrote: »

Ebi is a very narrow index and apparently completely disregards type as some sort of smoke and mirrors. Imo bulls haven't anything like as much to do with fertility as the guys who bring us ebi would have you believe. We sold out our original herd ten years ago. Six cow families covered a huge percentage of the herd well over 50% with a lot of others having ones and twos. The six families would have multiple generations calving within days of each other year in year out. Ebi takes no account of this but apparently reaches back into a cows sire line and penalizes them based on who their third/fourth sire was. I've been told that some of the importers are looking at getting a quantitive geneticist to examine the methodology used to produce ebi figures as they regularly don't seem to add up.

If ucd would get their act together their should be a realm of information coming out regarding ebi and if the high ebi holstein actually lives up to her quoted ebi regards litres/solids/fertility, find it comical that's bulls like legend and especially classic are so low on ebi their daughter proven data abroad shows they are producing cows preforming way above their irish data, talk to any English dairy farmer in grass based systems and they rave about classic daughters they have milking in terms of fertility/solids/and longevity

Keepgrowing

Know phuck all about ebi and don't use genomic here. Will only use proven Bulls with daughters milking. All kiwi cross used here. I worry that ebi has become a victim of its success in that SOME guys are picking high ebi sites just to breed the first 450 heifer/bull.

I have to concede that on the whole Ebi has been a great success when one considers the fertility gains in most herds. One thing to remember is that the most fertile cow is the one that recovers quickest after calving or any other stress event pre breeding

Mooooo

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Know phuck all about ebi and don't use genomic here. Will only use proven Bulls with daughters milking. All kiwi cross used here. I worry that ebi has become a victim of its success in that SOME guys are picking high ebi sites just to breed the first 450 heifer/bull.

I have to concede that on the whole Ebi has been a great success when one considers the fertility gains in most herds. One thing to remember is that the most fertile cow is the one that recovers quickest after calving or any other stress event pre breeding

Do you use the bw or ebi when selecting the kiwi cross bulls? Would you put them on to a hol/fr straight or would you use jersey first and then kiwi cross. Thinking of changing tack here, going to continue with the hol/fr on the cows which are calving 365 but possibly kiwi cross/ jersey on the others. Obviously by right i just shouldnt breed from them but until numbers are right that I can just Ai for replacements for the first six weeks this may fast forward fert a bit.

Keepgrowing

Mooooo wrote: »

Do you use the bw or ebi when selecting the kiwi cross bulls? Would you put them on to a hol/fr straight or would you use jersey first and then kiwi cross. Thinking of changing tack here, going to continue with the hol/fr on the cows which are calving 365 but possibly kiwi cross/ jersey on the others. Obviously by right i just shouldnt breed from them but until numbers are right that I can just Ai for replacements for the first six weeks this may fast forward fert a bit.

Stopped using Je. Selection of them is very poor. If we feel we need Je we select a kiwi with more Je or vice versa. Use BW but would link with Ebi if ebi figures are actually available

yosemitesam1

pedigree 6 wrote: »

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516151612.htm

Now if someone could tell me the methionine levels in various diets?
Instead of a supplement.
We know the too much protein link to infertility.
But here's a new one.;)

Rape meal is the highest % but fairly low in actual bypass protein so you'd have to feed a load and mess up the rest of the diet, in the us they're getting full production with about 14% cp using methionine and lysine supplements but it'd be an absolute nightmare to try and balance them on grass since there's so much variation

Buford T. Justice XIX

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Know phuck all about ebi and don't use genomic here. Will only use proven Bulls with daughters milking. All kiwi cross used here. I worry that ebi has become a victim of its success in that SOME guys are picking high ebi sites just to breed the first 450 heifer/bull.

I have to concede that on the whole Ebi has been a great success when one considers the fertility gains in most herds. One thing to remember is that the most fertile cow is the one that recovers quickest after calving or any other stress event pre breeding

IIrc, it was only 3 years ago that the fertility of the national herd reached the levels it was at in 1997!

I remember that year because it was the first year I used MAU as my stock bull, had about 30% of the herd MAU daughters at one stage.

I would still use him even though his EBI is way down the list now:o

Buford T. Justice XIX

https://twitter.com/PastureBase/status/764014644612571136?lang=en

Another top grassland dairy farmer - a lot of grass growth to date #12.5tonne

kowtow

I know little enough about EBI and the specifics of breeding - but I have spent many years solving complex problems with multi-generational genetic solutions, and I would have a fairly solid instinct for statistical risk.

What concerns me about EBI, indeed all similar systems to one degree or another, is the over reliance on and the pursuit of an average. The average is the most abused concept in finance, political science, economics, and now also it seems in genetic theory. EBI is a fantastic concept in the sense that it will bring up the overall level (the average) performance of the national herd, it will also - one hopes - focus minds on breeding and the general traits to pursue. What I am not so sure about is whether, in the long term, it will continue to bring through great bulls and whether we won't suffer rapidly diminishing returns from the strategy at some point in the future.

In finance we sometimes use generational / genetic systems to "breed" a solution which mathematics could not possibly find with today's computers - we literally cross thousands of generations of populations of potential solutions and apply them to the problem until we find we have magically "bred" an answer which mathematics could not have derived by brute force. One of the things we notice is the importance of outliers - obviously wrong solutions - which nevertheless transmit their genes through to the winning end result. If you lose the outliers along the way you lose the whole benefit of genetics.

I suppose in cow terms the equivalent is the unreliably infertile, difficult calving, dam who is a one off but manages somehow to transmit her perfect udder and legs through a bull calf into a dam which fixes up the infertility and difficult calving despite having three legs - producing the ingredients of the wonder family along the way. It strikes me that the relentless pursuit of great EBI averages along the way might well remove these difficult but ultimately vital genetic candidates too quickly from the overall population.

Put in simple terms, if there was an EBI for children would it likely have put Mozart, Beethoven, or Steve Jobs in the gene bank? And would we not be the worse off in the long term if it hadn't? It's not the use of EBI but the capacity for reliance on EBI to exclude more traditional selection that might present a problem in years to come.

I think in the near term it's a wonderful tool and will improve overall national herd performance, I can't pretend to understand it well enough to comment on the specifics, but my instinct says that if you concentrate on averages when breeding then ultimately average is exactly what you will get, and by definition average performers don't win races.

freedominacup

yewtree wrote: »

Not sure what you mean by EBi being a narrow index. If fertility is so hard to bred for what do you put down the improvement in fertility in national herd down to? After all the same lads are managing the cows yet calving interval and survival are improving year on year.
The highest type cows in the US are lasting the shortest time. Some type traits are important but a lot are irrelevant particularly around fertility. What type traits are important for breeding a fertile cow?
Your last point on the methodology of the ebi is frankly nonsense. The methodology behind the ebi is published in international scientific journals. What do you think the geneticist in icbf are doing?

I mean it's focus is very narrow. Fertility at the cost of many other traits. It doesn't matter how virtuous your motives are if you narrow down the focus of any breeding programme there's going to be unintended consequences. You mentioned the focus that the US breeding programme had on first calver production thirty years ago and the problems this caused. I see a something similar happening here because of the focus on fertility to the detriment of other production traits.

I would certainly give some credit to the breeding programme for increased fertility but there have been huge improvements in management too. Far more higher quality grass is been produced and utilized during the breeding period, a lot more scanning and veterinary intervention is going on and last but definitely not least cows with poor fertility have been culled heavily. But the accepted wisdom seems to be that ebi is the main if not the only factor in the improvements.

The methodology may be published but there are apparently large discrepancies between bulls with very similar foreign proofs and traits on ebi. I wonder what the geneticists are doing. The work is done by computers. Genomic proofs have been possible since the mid nineties but not commercially viable until seven or eight years ago as processing capacity came down in price. If computer tech hadn't dropped so much in price we would still be using daughter proofs. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places but I haven't seen much published info on how the first genomic proofs stacked up against lifetime performance of the first cows born to bulls which only had genomic proofs. Those cows must be fifth or sixth lactation by now.

yewtree

kowtow wrote: »

I know little enough about EBI and the specifics of breeding - but I have spent many years solving complex problems with multi-generational genetic solutions, and I would have a fairly solid instinct for statistical risk.

What concerns me about EBI, indeed all similar systems to one degree or another, is the over reliance on and the pursuit of an average. The average is the most abused concept in finance, political science, economics, and now also it seems in genetic theory. EBI is a fantastic concept in the sense that it will bring up the overall level (the average) performance of the national herd, it will also - one hopes - focus minds on breeding and the general traits to pursue. What I am not so sure about is whether, in the long term, it will continue to bring through great bulls and whether we won't suffer rapidly diminishing returns from the strategy at some point in the future.

In finance we sometimes use generational / genetic systems to "breed" a solution which mathematics could not possibly find with today's computers - we literally cross thousands of generations of populations of potential solutions and apply them to the problem until we find we have magically "bred" an answer which mathematics could not have derived by brute force. One of the things we notice is the importance of outliers - obviously wrong solutions - which nevertheless transmit their genes through to the winning end result. If you lose the outliers along the way you lose the whole benefit of genetics.

I suppose in cow terms the equivalent is the unreliably infertile, difficult calving, dam who is a one off but manages somehow to transmit her perfect udder and legs through a bull calf into a dam which fixes up the infertility and difficult calving despite having three legs - producing the ingredients of the wonder family along the way. It strikes me that the relentless pursuit of great EBI averages along the way might well remove these difficult but ultimately vital genetic candidates too quickly from the overall population.

Put in simple terms, if there was an EBI for children would it likely have put Mozart, Beethoven, or Steve Jobs in the gene bank? And would we not be the worse off in the long term if it hadn't? It's not the use of EBI but the capacity for reliance on EBI to exclude more traditional selection that might present a problem in years to come.

I think in the near term it's a wonderful tool and will improve overall national herd performance, I can't pretend to understand it well enough to comment on the specifics, but my instinct says that if you concentrate on averages when breeding then ultimately average is exactly what you will get, and by definition average performers don't win races.

But that is exactly what genomics will do, genomic testing allows far more Bulls to be tested each year so its more likely that the exceptional genetics will be captured. When only daughter proven Bulls were being used only a few hundred Bulls were tested now there are several thousand Bulls are tested each year.
Bulls are also been taken out of commercial herds so to your point think we are more likely now to identify the Steve job type Bulls.

I agree with the point made by @freedom regarding management and clearly not all the gains made are due to genetic gain but in my opinion ebi has produced a more fertile cow thAt gives a greater return on good management.

There is A lot of materialon the icbf website n publications section on valiadting the genomics proofs when the Bulls become proven. Any info I have see has shown a very close correlation between genomic proof and subsequent daughter proven proof.

mahoney_j

Fertility at the cost of so many other traits free ????.stan and myself have thrown up lots of figures here over time ,Stan further along than me but I think that's a harsh statement .weve both got high milk ,solids ,fertility ,good type and functional traits and both heavily use genomic Bulls .i made a decision 5 years ago that I wanted a more milky ,more solids type cow whilst mantaing the good fertility that my br fr base gave me .ebi and genomics provided what I wanted I havnt always chased the highest ebi Bulls at the expense of other traits as I wanted a balance I study my ebi reports and milk records and try to improve traits on what I have .sire advice programme on herd plus dose as good as same thing .there is a risk using all genomic sires but that's why u use a team of 5/6 Bulls .the only dud bull that I can think of that I used is ksk and luckily I only had 3 heifers by him .lots of farms around the country have embraced ebi and getting huge gains from it be it higher volume or lower volume