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Use Genetics to Help Manage CalvingHow to manage mating with genetics without losing genetic gain. CRV AmBreed has been helping farmers reduce their need for inductions and tighten their calving patterns for many years by providing options for short gestation and low calving difficulty sires. Once farmers understand that “one size does not fit all”, and they can make their choice of dairy sires do several jobs, achieving faster and more effective rates of genetic gain can be paired with a strategic approach to tightening calving patterns and reducing problems at calving time. CRV AmBreed clients can chose sires based on several sets of criteria – they may wish to maximise production gains in their first round of matings by choosing sires ranked highly for desirable traits such as protein, fertility or capacity, and then use short gestation sires on the later rounds to help tighten up calving. An extra 5-6 days in milk can provide a welcome boost to farm profitability. Low calving difficulty sires can be useful on troublesome cows and on heifers or smaller cows to reduce the management effort required through what is always a stressful and busy time. As recent news media items have highlighted, public perceptions around intervention strategies such as inductions are overwhelmingly negative. As a practice, inducing cows will be phased out meaning farmers will need to manage their mating season carefully to maximise the efficiency of their operation. What the news articles failed to mention was that most farmers are already working towards this goal and looking at strategies such as short gestation sires to manage mating more effectively and ethically. Farmers should not be panicked into believing that it is a choice between short gestation or genetic gain. The use of high-merit Sires with Breeding Values that meet the goals for the farm system in a focused breeding plan can target short gestation lengths or low calving difficulty sires for use at certain times of the program or on particular cows. This is not a complex process, and achieving shorter gestation lengths and thus more time in milk can be done without resorting to some of the crazy stories we hear such as using Yak semen on cows. Put in the three teams from Steve Gestation – Friesian Gestation – Jersey CD – Friesian
New Breeding Values from NZAEL As part of their commitment to ongoing development of the animal evaluation in new Zealand, NZAEL have recently developed two new breeding values which we believe will be of great value to NZ farmers. The breeding values came from a move from a multi-trait sire model for evaluating calving difficulty, to a multi-trait animal model which takes in far more information than previously and generating far more accurate information. A by-product of the extra information is gestation length, leading to AEL now publishing a formal gestation length BV. Prior to this, gestation length was estimated by the various breeding companies from their own data. Calving difficulty breeding values were originally supplied to allow breeding companies to assess the suitability of bulls for mating with yearling heifers, and to give farmers insight into which bulls may result in higher rates of assisted calving. |
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