Understanding the performance of cows in a milking herd based on EBI

[Johno12345]

As part of my final year project. I am researching “understanding the performance of cows in a milking herd based on EBI”. I would appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes of your time to fill out an online survey. Please find attached the link below.



https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...B-lGOuCcjHG4ouDrVXCvckPw/viewform?usp=sf_link

 

[Lhddsss]

Why not use an index that’s off some use not one that just breeds milkless twits

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

Why not use an index that’s off some use not one that just breeds milkless twits

Your not a fan?

 

[Lhddsss]

Made purely for the Irish companies. Doesn’t correlate with any other index worldwide, no top ebi bull gets even close to any other index top 100 bulls, are all the others wrong or is ebi wrong? Yes you need quality milk but when you breed for negative milk as the ebi does, doesn’t matter if your solids are 10% if they are 10% off f**k all, still equals f**k all

 

[Thompyd]

As part of my final year project. I am researching “understanding the performance of cows in a milking herd based on EBI”. I would appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes of your time to fill out an online survey. Please find attached the link below.



https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...B-lGOuCcjHG4ouDrVXCvckPw/viewform?usp=sf_link

I think you need to point out that this is for farmers who use EBI or are aware of the ebi values of their herds. You could guide people who answer "no" to using ebi what their reasons are. The rest of the survey is irrelevant to them.

 

[rusty]

Made purely for the Irish companies. Doesn’t correlate with any other index worldwide, no top ebi bull gets even close to any other index top 100 bulls, are all the others wrong or is ebi wrong? Yes you need quality milk but when you breed for negative milk as the ebi does, doesn’t matter if your solids are 10% if they are 10% off f**k all, still equals f**k all

From your table there is quite a high correlation between PLI and EBI at 0.9. Would have been better if it had been compared to SCI. I believe EBI has a low weighting for SCC as the Irish don’t get penalised much for this where as SCI has a much higher weighting for it meaning some high EBI bulls won’t be very good on SCI.

 

[Llmmm]

Why not use an index that’s off some use not one that just breeds milkless twits

Ebi is a joke no one inspects bull daughters.Type is irrelevant bulls are a cross between holstein and friesian so ur calves cud be either

 

[DairyNerd]

Made purely for the Irish companies. Doesn’t correlate with any other index worldwide, no top ebi bull gets even close to any other index top 100 bulls, are all the others wrong or is ebi wrong? Yes you need quality milk but when you breed for negative milk as the ebi does, doesn’t matter if your solids are 10% if they are 10% off f**k all, still equals f**k all

I think you are looking at it the wrong way round. EBI doesn't focus so much on milk production because it is a measure designed for use primarily by intensive grazing herds and therefore uses metrics which reflect what those dairies want. Milk production is part of that, hence it is still part of the EBI, but the focus is more balanced towards other traits; fertility, solids etc... You can still select bulls with high milk production rather than solids production sub indices if that is what you want.

In any case, most of the studies to date seem to be showing a strong relationship between increasing the EBI in your herd and increasing profitability.

 

[How Dairy]

I think I'd sooner focus on a British index as it is geared for British economic conditions. PLI for Holsteins and ACI when crossing is what I would look at - accepting that extreme PLI bulls wouldn't be what I'd be into for a crossbred herd ... would look at top 30% PLI with high constituents. There are still plenty of decent Irish bulls that fare well on our indexes.

 

[Lhddsss]

Dovea been taken over by cogent, Ireland genetics by genus, give it a couple years and both won’t bother to publish ebi figures anyway