May 2021

During the recent classification round at Conant-Acres in the American state of Maine, thirteen Holsteins classified EX-94. Yes, you read that correctly, 13x EX-94 on a single farm, on one day. And that within a herd tha...

K-Star is the prefix of one of the leading production herds of the US. Located at Dakota in northern Illinois, an hour south of Madison, it is owned by the Koester family who trade as Koester Dairy Inc. With a dazzling h...

The average calving interval is between 430-440 days, and that turns out to be intentional. In the brand new free stall barn owned by Rinderzucht Augustin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where there is a lot of emphasis on an...

Initially it was bulls such as Dudoc Bacculum-Red and Dudoc Mr Burns-RC that brought the Dudoc name to the attention of breeders around the world, especially those with an interest in Red-Holsteins. More recently it has...

At the beginning of this century, breeder Jan Bengtsson from the Swedish dairy farm Stäme Holsteins purchased embryos from the well-known Danish breeder Sören Ernst Madsen. The name of the foundation dam of the donor cow...

With part three, we conclude our trilogy about the remarkable outcross transmitter Pine-Tree AltaOak. In two earlier articles (March and April), we looked at remarkable sires on his maternal side: maternal grandsire Leif...

DG Charley is certainly unique. Without a doubt, he can call himself the sire of likely the world’s most talked about bull right now: Hurtgenlea Charl, America’s brand new TPI leader. Via him, Charley can also call himse...

Marius is a Jedi son from a family line descending from Sully Shottle May, the mother of McCutchen. The Marius proof has climbed by over 100 points since last round as daughters have been added to his proof, and he now g...

As is tradition, in the May issue of HI the new April breeding values are the center of attention. In our analyses you find the global elite of the highest genomic and daughter-proven sires, as well as the best red and p...

‘Producing milk,’ responds Eric Elbers from CRV to the question about the most important qualities of Delta Thilda, the Amigo daughter who is being used extensively within CRV’s breeding program. ‘Thilda is able to easil...

When looking for a prefix, Japanese breeder Nobuo Sato received inspiration while viewing a movie from a boat named “L’Espoir” (“Hope”). Without hope, his family would never ever have been successful in establishing a da...

The purchase of North-Echo 2905 (Day-Planet-Form Bret) in 2013 did not initially provide Sheland Farms in New York (900 milking cows) with the desired result. ‘Unfortunately she did not flush well,’ comments Erik Shelmid...

The Bliss family has supplied many of the highlights in Holstein breeding for Hardwood Holsteins in Wisconsin for almost 50 years. Milking members of the family currently in the Hardwood barn can be traced back through 1...

In April 2015, Australia was the first country in the world that published a breeding value for feed efficiency. The Netherlands followed in December 2020, and since April the USA and Canada also have a breeding value fo...

Earlier already, we reported about Arcowin, the cooperative agreement between three large European AI cooperatives: Evolution (France), Masterrind (Germany) and VikingGenetics (Scandinavia). Initially, it involved workin...

In an era where mergers and cooperatives generate headlines within the breeding industry, the founding of new breeding companies is a rarity. Despite this, the industry has recently seen the establishment of several priv...

The surge in use of beef bulls on lower genetic merit dairy cows continues to grow, and part of the evolution in this market is the use of male sexed beef semen. This month we introduce Semex from Canada and Superblu fro...

South Africa has among the largest average herd size of any country worldwide. Of all animals registered by South Africa Holstein, 97% are the result of imported semen, producing a very open genetic pool including the be...