Aurora Mitchell, here photographed at his home base in the Canadian province of Ontario during the summer of 2023. ‘It is nice to see that every day Mitchell is still gaining new fans,’ says Jan de Vries from AI Total.

JAN BIERMA HAN HOPMAN

A model of stability! Indeed, seven years after his birth, Aurora Mitchell continues to be the nearly faultless bull that his DNA indexes predicted at the time. Those who look up Mitchell’s profile will immediately notice: faults are hard to find in the pure white transmitter. And that with a high level of 2797 TPI – just 28 points below the gTPI index when he was launched six years ago! No wonder that Jan de Vries from owner AI Total comments: ‘Mitchell is simply a very easy bull to use. You maintain conformation, the fitness traits, and production. In addition, also in terms of inbreeding, he is a very easy bull to use, but also for breeding later.’ That was also mentioned in HI at the time of his launch. ‘As a bonus, Mitchell has a bit of an alternate pedigree.’ No wonder Mitchell continues to be popular. De Vries: ‘Demand is constantly at a high level. Many farmers who are milking his daughters are now using him again: Or farmers that see daughters at their neighbours become enthusiastic and begin using him.’

Of course, it is always easy to judge in hindsight, but: of the dozens of sires that at the time (in 2018) were situated above Mitchell for TPI, most are now below Mitchell – and often by hundreds of points. For this reason, Mitchell received few sire of son opportunities. De Vries recalls: ‘In the time when Mitchell was a promising young DNA sire, he had virtually no chances as a sire of sons, also not in our organization. Just towards the end we started using him, due to his conformation and udder health. In hindsight, maybe unfortunate.’ But, he continues: ‘We expect a lot of Mitchell as a great-grandsire. In modern breeding, perhaps he could not quite meet the required level, but he certainly has something to add in the pedigree. Precisely due to his fitness and conformation, later on you can really hit the gas with production bulls.’

‘After that, with production sires, you can really push the gas.’

At the same time: the decision to eventually still give Mitchell opportunities as a sire of sons provided AI Total with the high RC sire DG Borax-RC: until now, with 2850 gTPI, his highest son. Just like his sire, Borax displays a faultless linear profile with +1.92 gPTAT.

What does the pedigree that was able to provide this faultless, stable transmitter at a high TPI level look like? His sire is the (nearly identically named) Wet Mitchell: a son of Uno son Tatum out of an EX-90 Mogul daughter of Miss OCD Robust Delicious: the Global Cow winner of 2018. Aurora Mitchell’s dam is Aurora 15902 GP-83. She completed two long lactations with a total of 799d 74,250 lb/33,750 kg 4.04% 3.46% (92.9 lb/42.2 kg per day) and is a daughter of Uno son Bombero (which means Uno appears twice as a great-grandsire in Mitchell’s pedigree) out of a VG-85 Mayfield daughter. That is followed by a VG-88 Iota daughter, all bred at Aurora Ridge Dairy in the American state of New York.

It requires little explanation: sires of Mitchell’s calibre are precisely the kind that dairy farmers world-wide are looking for in order to create their next generation of milking cows.

AURORA MITCHELL

(USA 12/2023) +891lb +.13% +.05% +73lb +42lb 2797 TPI 2.68 SCS +2.5 PL +0.3 DPR 2.0% SCE +2.28 PTAT Tatum Mitchell x Bombero x Mayfield x Iota x Mega-Man x Wizard x Bosside Ruben