| Guernsey Bulls awaiting proofs |
 |
 |
 |
| Tuesday, 27 January 2009 12:24 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Young Guernsey Bulls awaiting proofs in the UK- Jan 09There are 18 Young Guernsey Bulls with daughters born in the UK that are awaiting their first proofs, the number of daughters listed are registered with EGCS and most of these bulls will have additional daughters in herds on Guernsey Island. The advisors to the GGBP scheme would maintain that a minimum of 40 daughters from any one bull provided that they are in more than 10 herds will provide a stable proof. However the costs of collection for each of these bulls has risen by 50% in the 7 years since GGBP was relaunched and so as a rule of thumb it has been necessary to market around 600 straws of semen from each bull and that has normally been the amount imported from the young American bulls that have been added to the GGBP scheme. Experience suggests that approximately each 7 straws of semen sold results in a pedigree heifer registered with EGCS and usually we would expect between 80 and 100 predigree daughters. Click on the bulls name to find the full pedigree and cow family details from CDI.
* Chillers figures are for his US Calved daughters ** Loren's dam has incomplete PTA information and this has affected his figures and that of Ivor # Iceberg has no calculation as his US Parent information is missing from the EGCS database. The 3 Genus bulls, River, Junes Oak and Hercules will have had probably 2000 straws used. There will be more daughters to come from Eros and Ivor whose semen was sold during 2008 but there does seem to be a trend towards fewer daughters from these young bulls. This concerns me as it suggests that these bulls are probably not earning enough to cover the costs of their collection. The other marked difference is the change in balance between PLI and GMI. PLI was remodelled by Dairy Co in 2007 to put more emphasis on “survival” traits and fertility and rewards depth of cow family information . Five years ago Mike Cox made a proposal to the FOB Committee suggesting that more emphasis should be placed on the cow families, a man ahead of the times, and certainly a “lone” voice as the only dairy farmer on Alderney, but hardly in the wilderness as he is in the land of “milk and money”.
Comments (2)
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Who in their right mind is going to take the risk of young unpredictable sires with GMIs 100 points lower than now many better proven sires that came through the program and are still available. this is where Dr Bichards argument falls apart to continually use the next new generation because they are not good enough .
High index hfrs generally get there proof from fancy first lactations but true strong index comes from 3rd and 4th lactation good classification and persistance in the herd ,2nd lactation EX cows is a farce if they clasify EX 4th calf that is when they are genuinely prooving them selves, these should be the next generation bull mothers.
Extreme caution should be given to the american young sires although most come out well often they are poorer than predicted or 100 points better far to big a discrepancy, for example why has Loren now got incomplete PTA information was it not complete before he was chosen , Maxie Loredo initially had +2.44 for mammary now +1.4ish others too.
Just had some info on 2 GGBP bulls from GY wont say who they were but they averaged GMI 295
Not an easy problem to solve thank goodness it aint my headache
coxy
The second reason is the" insularity" of the Guernsey breed societies and breeders,I have been fortunate in that from 2000 until 2007 I was able to visit every mainland herd and most of the Island herds as well as herds in the USA and Australia,unfortunately that experience has not been shared by anyone else.
Mike mentions Aaron and Pedro and it true that they have proved outstanding and breeders have had and still have the chance to use them again but the sales of Pedro semen do not support Mike's arguments.
What has changed in the last 10 years is the modernisation of the "herd book", this is now available from CDI, at the touch of a button and every daughter of every Pedigree bull can now be viewed, at a glance one can see how they have scored and how they have produced.
We are trying through this site to make that easier with the auto links to the CDI website, something that I was never able to achieve on the EGCS site.
When I had access to the EGCS data files, I was happy to spend the time to average the PTA or Classification scores in order to measure the changes (mainly positive), an exercise repeated by Marco Winters of Dairy Co at the recent Breeding conference and again there has been improvement of every trait that was part of the GGBP breeding goals.
More importantly what am I now seeing on farms,generally much more "attractive" commercial cows,I wish that more breeders would make the time to get off their farms and see other herds, but it doesn't happen.
Finally the "progeny test" has to happen before the second use can be justified and yes some of the young bulls on offer should be better, but they are the best that have been born, the frustration of the last 10 years is that the best cows have not produced enough sons or in some cases any sons.
My concern is that two other GGBP bulls that have succeeded have not had a second use (SP Royal Oak and MC Red Oak), no semen was stored (for economic reasons) and as yet no sons have been tested from their best daughters, but that is still possible.