Our herd is made up of approximately 450 milking cows, 100 yearlings, 130 calves and 20 odd dry stock. We artificially inseminate (AI) cows in order to get them into calf and we use jersey bulls as mop up bulls for any cows that don't get into calf by AI.
In 2009, our bull team was made up of:
ABS bulls
Junction
Drake
Megaman
BOS bulls
Support
Sunflower
Kampman (genomics)
Classic (used in flush program)
Semex bulls
Powerplay
For the past 4 years, we have been joining our heifer yearlings to AI instead of putting the bulls in with them. This has started to pay off for us, as we have more heifer calves on the ground at calving time, meaning that more pressure is placed on the herd and a greater culling rate can be implemented. The bulls used in 2009 for the heifer joining program were BOS' Olympic, Jag and Rafael.
Last year saw us undertake another two flushing programs. Again, we submitted Craiglands Luckystrike 2843, who was Grand Champion dairy cow and Best Vesselled dairy cow at Colac show in November 2007. For the first flush we used Ladino, but unfortunately we got no viable embryos. For the second flush, we used Poos Classic Staedel and got 2 viable embryos. The 2 recip cows recently calved and we got 1 heifer and 1 bull (keeping the bull).
During this year's mating period we intend on flushing Craiglands Luckystrike 3111 who took out Senior Reserve Champion and Supreme Udder at the 2009 Noorat show.
Craiglands Luckystrike 2843 - VG89 @ 2007 Colac show
The goals that we strive to attain in our breeding program are;
- high components (fat and protein)
- good feet and legs
- good udder attachement (fore and rear)
- longevity of cows
- fertility of daughters
- calving ease
In 2005 we decided to register the herd with Holstein Australia. The rationale driving this was because Sam wanted to get into showing some cows, and you are required to be registered to do this. However, in going through the process, we discovered that there were other benefits to it. The obvious one was the opening up of potential markets for our surplus stock (both here in Australia and overseas), but also by being a member of Holstein Australia, we were able to have an independant expert classify our stock, giving us the faults and positive attributes of each animal submitted for classification. This has a direct effect on our breeding program, and which sires to use over which cows.
Currently, we have almost the entire herd registered with approximately half that number being pure bred.
Over the past 2 years, we have kept a number of bull calves with the intention of selling them to other commercial herds for use in their own breeding programs. These bulls are registered with Holstein Australia and are available for sale now.
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