10 Year Responses
Where will your herd be in 10 years time?
26/09/2007
Using modern computer modelling techniques it is possible to accurately predict the response to breeding programs and philosophies to study the effect over time.
NZMI is a ‘desired gains’ index designed to support such long term breeding strategies.
It does not look backward for indicators to respond to, but sets out to achieve clearly defined long term goals.
Of course there is always a balancing act to achieve the best result possible, in as many areas as possible.
Substantial expert technical effort went into developing the ‘best overall response’.
We succeed by focusing on the areas we found to support the development of dairy cows with improved herd life and health.
We also managed to achieve this with very little compromise on the production traits.
The response over the ten year period (shown on the graphs below) represents significant gains in some key areas using NZMI as your breeding objective;
• Fertility – A large response from its direct inclusion and also because of its indirect correlation with rump angle as well.
• Capacity – Increased as is rump width making easier calving cows
• Rump angle – Correlated to fertility and ease of calving (more slope) hence this its direct inclusion in NZMI.
• Udder Overall - strongly correlated with longevity and low SCS so a high weighting is justified here and it is also highly correlated with all the other udder traits.
BW 10 Year Response (Click on graph to view PDF)
NZMI 10 Year Response (Click on graph to view PDF)
