April 2023

She was one of the eye-catchers on the European show scene last winter, won Austria’s national show and represented Italy in the selection for world champion. To say that Jomagro Cheyenne-RC EX-90 is Europe’s most conspi...

We are immediately surprised as Silvo Baume tells about the unique climate in the beautiful region around his farm close to Les Breuleux in Switzerland. ‘Here it freezes nearly all twelve months of the year. Yes, also mi...

With its shiny new state-of-the-art dairy barn complete with sand-bedded free-stalls for the 100-cow herd, 2 milking robots, an on-farm produce store, elevated viewing area and function rooms, Browndale is preparing for...

While simultaneous improvement for production and fertility has been difficult to come by over the last decades, breeding has made the antagonism between these two traits a thing of the past. Although bulls that improve...

The accompanying table shows the top selling sires at ABS Global in China. Gary Gao from ABS China explains: ‘From all three, more than 30,000 doses (sexed and conventional) have been sold. Generally speaking, dairy farm...

His early daughters – by now in their fourth lactation – have already produced 60,000 kg/130,000 lb milk. And in the meantime, his breeding influence in the international Red Holstein population is visibly growing, even...

In order to register any young bull in Canada a genomic test is required. The Dickieson family of Birkentree Holsteins at North Rustico, Prince Edward Island, wanted to register a young herd bull so they sent away the re...

Grand Champion at the Estevanens Show in Switzerland last fall was Londaly Armani Lovely-Red EX-94. Earlier in her career Lovely had been Intermediate Champion at the Swiss Expo 2017 and 1st in her class in Bulle 2018. T...

There have been a number of recognized “Golden Crosses” in the breeding world…in this cow family it was Monterey over Cookiecutter Mogul Hanker and then King Doc over the Monterey’s. Now a third wave of great all-round,...

No sexed semen, strictly no flushing, yearlings in the barn by F16 Rocket (a sire born in 1983) and a closed herd for nearly 20 years… what gems could possibly be found in Ireland’s Drumcliffe herd? Here we discover the...

In February 2023, HI presented 22 EX daughters of the Roxy descendant Gloryland-I Goldwyn Locket EX-94. Remarkable: an unmentioned VG-85 Doorman out of Locket has likely provided the most valuable Locket descendant at th...

In HI’s March edition, Pine-Tree-I Pursuit (from Semex) came into view as one of the most faultless sires in the Holstein breed – also at a high index level. Reason for HI to delve into Pursuit’s pedigree and to highligh...

In a world-first, the April genetic evaluations in Canada include the new trait of Methane Efficiency. It is expected that this new genetic selection tool should enable dairy producers to achieve a 20-30% reduction in me...

Globally, the breeding of polled Holsteins is coming to greater maturity. The supply of attractive P and PP sires is steadily increasing with more variety. The same is true for the presence of remarkable female polled Ho...

Holsteins have become the universal dairy cow and dominate in most major dairy countries. However, it may not be a “one size fits all” situation. The interaction of genetics with environment has long been observed. Certa...

A conformation average of 88 points on more than 300 classified cows, a total of 400 homebred EX cows,  eight national Grand Champion titles during the past twenty years, and an average annual production of  15,000 kg/33...

‘What makes Cirrus-P so popular? He is super balanced and does not have any knock-out faults. And he descends from a very attractive cow family.’ Speaking is Jordan Siemers about the Parfect son Winstar Cirrus-P, who via...

The name says it all: ST stands for Sexing Technologies. This organization is one of the important pioneers in the area of sexing semen. Thanks to this technology, dairy farmers can breed replacement animals from their b...

For ten years already, the National Cattle Breeding Centre (NCBC) has operated the largest beef-on-dairy program in Ireland, for Munster Bovine, Progressive Genetics and Ireland Genetics. ‘The Irish dairy herd has grown...

‘Beef-on-Dairy started a long time ago here. As soon as sexed semen was introduced, progressive dairy farmers started with beef-on-dairy. Four years ago that accelerated when calf growers started paying premiums for cros...

Beef-on-dairy is absolutely not a new phenomenon at the British AI company Cogent. ‘We launched our beef-on-dairy program in 2009 in order to ensure that we could make the right selections for our dairy farmers. Beef-on-...

At the Dutch AI company KI Samen, they are clear about the future prospects for beef-on-dairy: ‘The average age of milking cows needs to increase, and therefore herd turnover rates will drop resulting in more and more ro...

HI has already reported various times about the Belgian Blue Group (BBG) and that is not surprising: the organization has a large offering of >200 sires and is active in >55 countries. Simon Noppen from BBG talks about t...

Well known: Angus and Belgian-Blue are among the big names in the beef-on-dairy business. But those looking for an interesting and proven alternative will find a good candidate in the Italian Piedmontese breed. It IS Not...

Ireland has an index (DBI) that is especially developed for beef-on-dairy. ‘It’s a truly valuable instrument for both distributors and farmers to distinguish the best sires for beef-on-dairy,’ explains Stephen Dowling, t...

With over eight million doses of semen sold, of which three million went to the international market, the German-French breeding program of Synetics counts as one of the biggest players worldwide. The company, which was...

Talk about an experienced giant in the beef-on-dairy market: in 2022, WWS (the international arm of Select Sires and Accelerated Genetics) sold more than 3.8 million doses of beef semen: two-thirds for beef-on-dairy. ‘Du...

BVN, Germany’s largest Fleckvieh breeding program will host an open house on May 1. At the new sire facility in Neustadt a.d.Aisch, thousands of visitors will be presented with about 80 impressive sires. ‘BVN is celebrat...

The French breeding organization Gènes Diffusion, working with the breed Charolais among others, has several decades of experience with beef-on-dairy. ‘As soon as farmers in our region switched to Holsteins, they were lo...

Very recently (HI 03/2023), an HI article appeared about the beef-on-dairy program at Semex. At the same time, on the cover of this Beef-on-Dairy International section you see a popular pupil from Semex: the Angus bull G...

‘Switzerland has a strong demand for quality. As such, there is also demand for higher meat quality, and a lot of beef production takes place on dairy farms. Eventually the demand came from Swiss agriculture itself: they...

Holsteins in Honduras? We hardly ever hear about that. As such, when we happened to see a picture of a nice Jordan-Red daughter in Honduras, it immediately drew our attention. Honduras is a country with more than ten mil...