- Location
- somerset
as I see it, a lot of b fr seem to be 'graded down' holstiens', we started breeding our fr to holstiens back in the mid 70's, the reasons for doing so were, low yields, bad udders (bottle tits etc) temper, some miserable old bitches, and a young lad fresh out of college! but there were plenty of good fr's there, 1st hol bull was avoncroft matchmaker. but the good old fr used to make a good barrener and give you a good calf, and they lasted, the same cannot be said of the hol, so (some of us) now look to change from from hol back to fr, but the fr has changed since then, and has had an injection of hol blood en route, so they are not really like the fr of the 70/80's, no offence to friesianfan, but when you look through a catalogue and you see - figures for milk, some people get put off, and choose a milk + bull, which tends to be a touch hol.
looked at a catalogue of irish grazing bulls, only 2 were pure fr, the rest had varying degrees of hol in them, so were these there with fig to sell the bull? currently we are using dutch fr through cattle genie, as in my opinion they have stayed purer, and with bulls 8/9/10 years old, they are well proven.
the jersey x's are some of our best cows, till it comes to calves and culls, but the nearer we get to pure jersey, and we have a number pure, we struggle to get them I/c ! and having had a lot of imput to a CI herd back in the 70/80's that hasn't improved to much. so we try b swiss, fleck, mri, normande, aryshire shorthorn and others, so, at the end of the day, you end up with mongrel cows (no offence) that we had years go, and bred pure from !! albeit higher yielding. so, what is the ideal x, and how do you get there ?
2 way, 3 way x's ? i'd love to know the answer, our policy, at the moment, is dutch fr on the better cows, and a carefully selected hol ( + 514 milk, and +36.3 fat/protein, +929 days longevity, good fertility, and short gestation) on our not so good cows, jury's out on normande.
looked at a catalogue of irish grazing bulls, only 2 were pure fr, the rest had varying degrees of hol in them, so were these there with fig to sell the bull? currently we are using dutch fr through cattle genie, as in my opinion they have stayed purer, and with bulls 8/9/10 years old, they are well proven.
the jersey x's are some of our best cows, till it comes to calves and culls, but the nearer we get to pure jersey, and we have a number pure, we struggle to get them I/c ! and having had a lot of imput to a CI herd back in the 70/80's that hasn't improved to much. so we try b swiss, fleck, mri, normande, aryshire shorthorn and others, so, at the end of the day, you end up with mongrel cows (no offence) that we had years go, and bred pure from !! albeit higher yielding. so, what is the ideal x, and how do you get there ?
2 way, 3 way x's ? i'd love to know the answer, our policy, at the moment, is dutch fr on the better cows, and a carefully selected hol ( + 514 milk, and +36.3 fat/protein, +929 days longevity, good fertility, and short gestation) on our not so good cows, jury's out on normande.
