Dairy chit chat II

Without my googling it, what's "aAa"?

Mooooo wrote: »

Haven't used it myself just have heard of a few at it. My understanding is its more about balancing things out as opposed to extremes of either.? Have used a few so called high yielding genomic sires here and they came tall with nice udders and all that but they didn't have the capacity to match and haven't delivered the yield

My take on it is to keep away from any bull positive for height. Deep ribs, wide chests, wide rumps will deliver yield without needing new buildings. I'd be in the Clarkson school of thought. Power, power, power, gets you out of all sorts of trouble. We haven't and won't buy a bull without daughter proven confirmation scores. Not enough weight given to these figures with ebi imo and there's going to be a bitter harvest from it. HO breeding in the eighties fell into a similar trap. Focused on certain traits and didn't pay enough attention to confirmation. They ended up with giraffes with no survivability. Ebi seems to be chasing fertility at the expense of most other traits and I think it's going to have just as detrimental an outcome before we're much older.

freedominacup wrote: »

My take on it is to keep away from any bull positive for height. Deep ribs, wide chests, wide rumps will deliver yield without needing new buildings. I'd be in the Clarkson school of thought. Power, power, power, gets you out of all sorts of trouble. We haven't and won't buy a bull without daughter proven confirmation scores. Not enough weight given to these figures with ebi imo and there's going to be a bitter harvest from it. HO breeding in the eighties fell into a similar trap. Focused on certain traits and didn't pay enough attention to confirmation. They ended up with giraffes with no survivability. Ebi seems to be chasing fertility at the expense of most other traits and I think it's going to have just as detrimental an outcome before we're much older.

I think you have a point on capacity/power in cows but if the EBI was going to have wildly inaccurate figures should it have not happened already, there are herds selecting for EBI for 10 years at this stage.

I have seen work from Joe Patton showing that higher EBI cows are lasting longer in herds in comparison to lower EBI cows so selection on fertility should be improving cow longevity. I am crossbreeding here but i cant ignore the high EBI B&W herds getting very impressive results.

Mooooo wrote: »

I guess while fertility will obviously improve longevity as cows will go back in calf and calve at the right time are those same cows improving yields as well.? Don't want to improve one and forsake the other either. I don't think I have many cows here that are out and out better than their dams but there has been a lot of change here in the last number of years as well as me not being around long enough to compare properly really

I think you've answered your own question. A cow going back in calf and calving at the right time is the easiest and most profitable way to increase your yield of solids which is after all what you are being paid on. There is plenty of milk in most herds, they just are not producing to their potential because they are not meeting these two simple criteria. A mature herd, compact calving, low replacement rate... This is what fertility gives you.

Anyone elce finding dry cows are eating a hell of a lot more silage than usual this year? Dry cow pit is nearly finished here already cows will be going on to a hay silage mix by xmass

According to our dm tests and the scales on the wagon cows were eating up to 14kg dm, on 10kg and 3 of straw now and there still clearing before morning

Timmaay wrote: »

Got too much low dm silage here, 20dm pit stuff, I'd much rather be feeding dry cows some drier steamy stuff. Trying to feed them straw but between 40 of them they hadn't a bale of straw finished after 3days which isn't much use. Picked up some haylage today, hopefully that will help abit.

If ya want to give straw. Let them finish silage completely and then spread out a bale of straw . Then no silage till it's gone. Say have them eating a bale every third day and silage the other times.

trixi2011 wrote: »

According to our dm tests and the scales on the wagon cows were eating up to 14kg dm, on 10kg and 3 of straw now and there still clearing before morning

Finding the same here
Give 11kg and they have it polished
Give them 14kg the next day and that seems to be right and then 2 or 3 days later they leave heap of it.
Don't know what to make if it

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Without my googling it, what's "aAa"?

Cow type can be broken down into 6 type traits. Hence the 6 digit aAa code for each Bull. 3 of the traits are round traits and 3 are sharp traits. If you continue to breed round on round you will end up with a beef cow with great resilience but no milk, and if you keep breeding sharp on sharp you end up with a knife edged animal that will milk itself to death after keeling over.

The cows are classified, if that is the correct word, at a cost of €6, and only ever have to be done once. You will now have a code as to the type of Bull you should choose to make the offspring of that cow more balanced. If she is too round, the bull codes will more sharp and visa versa. You can then choose what type of breed you want to use or Ebi parameters or whatever for the bulls you want, in the knowledge that you will be breeding a more balanced cow to your set of principles.

The problem with the active list is that it is full of genomic sires with no type proofs, so you could be breeding round on round or sharp on sharp without any capability of deciding otherwise.

Most of these bulls are aAa typed by an inspection of the bull, and the system looks to me to be a very cost effective way of adding a type proof to the EBI...We've been at it a few years with the first crop of heifers due in the parlour in the spring..

yewtree wrote: »

I think you have a point on capacity/power in cows but if the EBI was going to have wildly inaccurate figures should it have not happened already, there are herds selecting for EBI for 10 years at this stage.

I have seen work from Joe Patton showing that higher EBI cows are lasting longer in herds in comparison to lower EBI cows so selection on fertility should be improving cow longevity. I am crossbreeding here but i cant ignore the high EBI B&W herds getting very impressive results.

10 years selecting means 9 year old cows max. How did Joe manage to do his research. A bit of extrapolating from relevant sources??? I didn't say it was going to have wildly inaccurate results rather that they weren't assessing some very important traits. As for problems emerging see Greenfields and they're hoofcare spend which on a per capita basis is far more than double our spend on a pure ho herd. The line as long as high ebi and xbreds have been discussed is that they simply don't have hoofcare problems now we have a locomotion scale, I think Jack called it, to assess the problem.

I'd also question why all year this year we were being battered over the head about condition score. Every dg meeting from very early in the year it was being pointed out how good the condition score of high ebi xbreds was. ?????? Personally I don't want my fresh calvers piling on the pounds in late spring early summer. If they are I'd have big question marks about where the feed is going. It's not making me much money going up on her back at that stage of the year. A fertile cow will be one who isn't stressed. If she's packing on pounds in April/May she's not stressed but where is the balance. Methinks thou dost protest too much would be my view on teagascs's sudden fascination with early season condition scoring.

alps wrote:

Most of these bulls are aAa typed by an inspection of the bull, and the system looks to me to be a very cost effective way of adding a type proof to the EBI...We've been at it a few years with the first crop of heifers due in the parlour in the spring..

alps wrote:

The cows are classified, if that is the correct word, at a cost of €6, and only ever have to be done once. You will now have a code as to the type of Bull you should choose to make the offspring of that cow more balanced. If she is too round, the bull codes will more sharp and visa versa. You can then choose what type of breed you want to use or Ebi parameters or whatever for the bulls you want, in the knowledge that you will be breeding a more balanced cow to your set of principles.

alps wrote:

Cow type can be broken down into 6 type traits. Hence the 6 digit aAa code for each Bull. 3 of the traits are round traits and 3 are sharp traits. If you continue to breed round on round you will end up with a beef cow with great resilience but no milk, and if you keep breeding sharp on sharp you end up with a knife edged animal that will milk itself to death after keeling over.

That's the most fantastic summary of a system I have been trying to get my head around in spare moments....

Thank you for that!

I'm interested in AaA because I have some niggling concerns about EBI, certainly used alone - which I know many do not- and not having any great eye to judge one cow from another I need some sort of template to codify traits if I am to get anywhere.

EBI, particularly with genomic bulls, Is also a purely statistical proposition and therefore will be more effective the larger the herd it is used in which works against us here.

Come to think of it I need to order AI catalogues... apart from munster which I get which ones should I be calling?

Buford T. Justice V wrote:

There is a huge proportion of the farming population that wouldn't have the wherewithal to research and decide on a course of action to solve their problems. Teagasc are trying to push/pull them in that direction with the downside that their focus is leaving the better farmer stranded without a more relevant advisory service for their needs.

They are, as you rightly say, spending a good deal of time trying to get the everyday farmer (who isn't interested) up to the standard of the average farmer (who doesn't exist). That's a thankless task, but over time it will make a big difference.

Like all preachers they simplify things to the point where they often appear narrow minded or even to ignore reality (in the form of COP figures perhaps, or the pursuit of EBI). Like all Preachers they don't work for you, but for the statistical mass of the population at large. Gospels are written for crowds, not theology students.

They are effective in getting their message across - if they weren't, we wouldn't find it so easy to criticise them. And that is a good thing.

kowtow wrote: »

That's the most fantastic summary of a system I have been trying to get my head around in spare moments....

Thank you for that!

I'm interested in AaA because I have some niggling concerns about EBI, certainly used alone - which I know many do not- and not having any great eye to judge one cow from another I need some sort of template to codify traits if I am to get anywhere.

EBI, particularly with genomic bulls, Is also a purely statistical proposition and therefore will be more effective the larger the herd it is used in which works against us here.

Come to think of it I need to order AI catalogues... apart from munster which I get which ones should I be calling?

You surely have a template within your own herd? Surely there's a cow who you think "if I had a herd of them I'd be flying". There's your template. You're milk recording? Now pick your production traits how much milk/milk solids you want to rise by. Towards the bottom of the page you'll see a linear assessment of various physical traits the bull will effect. You know how the rest of your herd literally shapes up to your template cow. Try to match the bulls with the characteristics you want. The chances of you getting a bull which ticks every box is small so pick one's that tick as many as possible without going negative on any traits you think are important.

freedominacup wrote: »

If roadways were the problem the my ho girls should have been much worse. Unless things deteriorated badly since I was last in Greenfields their roadways varied from good to excellent. Generally better than ours at any rate.

It would be far more beneficial to breed a cow that could look after herself and didn't lose so much condition in early lactation. They weren't talking about improving condition score they were talking about improved condition scores in April and May when you need the milk to be flowing.

As far as I know I think they spent +10k on resurfacing roads this year, I am pretty sure I read that in joureal

I agree with you on a cow that can look after herself, what I was saying was these higher fertility cows seem to be in negative energy balance for a shorter time. It probably means that won't hit the high milk yeild peaks but if they last longer their lifetime performance should be greater