Aug 15 2009
Invitation
An Invitation to participate in “Dairy Crossbreeding”
By Dr. Ted Burnside and Dr. Gary Rogers
Dear Colleagues and Dairy Crossbreeding Enthusiasts:
We welcome you to our new website “Dairy Crossbreeding” www.dairycrossbreeding.com! This site is dedicated to presenting educational material on breed crossing for dairy cattle. Our website is sponsored and financed by Geno Global, an export company wholly owned by Geno, a farmer-owned cooperative AI breeding company which runs the only dairy breeding program in Norway for a national dairy cow herd of about 250,000 cows.
This website will strive to fairly appraise what is written and said by all sources about the theory and practice of crossbreeding in dairy herds, including different breeds and what they can contribute towards breed crossing, and will invite dairy farmers and dairy scientists to bring their experience and information to the website to share with others.
Please see Ted and Gary’s complete invitation and further description: Click here for the full pdf article
8 Responses to “Invitation”
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Thank you for starting a site like this. I’m hoping this can take off as I am very interested to hear what other people that are crossbreeding have to say.
I milk 420 cows near Madison, WI with a crossbred population that is increasing daily. My oldest cross just freshened for the sixth time and looks like she could keep going forever.
My philosophy is sort of a hybrid (keeping with the spirit of mixing things!) in that there is no set system and no breed that is out of bounds. I also maintain a significant population of pure Holsteins that feed into the system.
So far I’m extremely happy with the results but it’s based mostly on F1’s. The F2’s are starting to trickle in as we speak.
I’ve started initially crossing with Brown Swiss during the mid 90s and have since moved onto the NRF, SRB, and Montbeliarde primarily for 3 way crossing and also F1s. I’m also interested in what others have to say. During the past year I’ve added some Jersey and a very limited amount of Milking Shorthorn to the mix. I’m personally surrounded by a lot of extreme negativity with crossbreeding from Holstein purists, however, I do keep in contact with positive and objective indusrty professionals from various fields. I will also mention that our Brown Swiss crosses were included in the Penn State study. Chad Dechow has been to the dairy. The business is located about 40 miutes South of my alma mater.
In September of 2008 I became a partner in the family business Penn-England, LLC with approx 1950 milking cows and 1400 replacements at three different dairies. Crossbreds account for only 4% – 5% of the total herd with the rest being registered Holstein. Several bulls are sent to studs every year and embryos are exported to various countries. Crosses have been used with success as embryo recipients.
I have been involved with crossing for about 12 years and I’m still learning and experimenting. My goal is to maintain 3 way crosses and not create any additional crosses unless there is a reproductive hardship with the Holsteins.
I do hear a lot of negativity from the Holstein folks about crossbreeding but keep one thing in mind. If I was entirely happy with my Holsteins, I wouldn’t have bothered with crossing in the first place.
On the other hand, crossbreeding will not be successful if you don’t do your homework. Using the cheapest bulls from the various breeds and relying one hundred percent on hybrid vigor doesn’t accomplish a thing. Hybrid vigor can’t mask poor mating choices and poor genetics overall. A lot of the focus with crossbreeding is with hybrid vigor but in order to truly capitalize on this the best genetics need to be used.
What we probably could debate amongst ourselves is the usefulness of various breeds in crossbreeding. It’ll vary for each farm and management situation of course. But I’m looking for more opinions from farmers themselves. The various companies can take the research data and make them look as favorable as possible to the breed they market, as you’d expect them to do. I’m just not running into a lot of independent opinions.
I realize this site is sponsored by Geno, who markets the Norwegian Red, but I do appreciate that they’ve offered a medium for farmers to discuss the merits themselves and link to other companies. I haven’t used any Norwegian Red myself, as my Semex rep can’t seem to find my driveway even after alerting him of my interest. Actually, most Semex people I’ve talked don’t seem all that excited to sell Norwegian Red. Granted, I basically had to twist the arms of my Select Sires rep to start stocking the Swedish Red bulls I want.
I’m guessing it’s more of an issue of salesman not feeling comfortable pushing something they don’t know a whole lot about or trust. Or if they are proud Holstein people that don’t have confidence in crossbreeding they can’t feel comfortable selling something they don’t have confidence in. That’s all right for somebody like me that is willing to do the research but it doesn’t help others that don’t have the time when their sales reps aren’t of much help in that regard.
Jon:
Thanks for your post to this new site. We at Geno have developed this site for people just like you and our intent is to allow producers and industry people to discuss crossbreeding in this type of forum. In addition, we hope to be able to provide good, scientific data for background/reference material at this site.
I recently joined Geno after 20 years as a university professor. I taught and did research in the field of dairy cattle genetics so I understand the need to have good, sound data for decision making. I continue to serve in a research capacity for Geno but also wear several other hats. Geno will not try to monopolize this site nor will we squelch any sound, scientific data on crossbreeding that will be of benefit to its users (producers like you). We at Geno now know that well-proven Norwegian Red sires will be extremely useful in rotational crossbreeding programs in US commercial dairy herds. We have enough data from US herds (that I have analyzed) to be very confident in what the Norwegian Red has to offer. Commercial dairy herds are quickly figuring this out as well so we at Geno do not need to use this site as another advertisement for our product.
One of the reasons that I joined the Geno team is that it became abundantly clear to me that crossbreeding programs involving Norwegian Red and some other breeds were more profitable under many herd circumstances than pure Holsteins. In short, the Norwegian Red breed has some attributes that make it extremely valuable in crossbreeding programs involving Holsteins. This is not something that I really wanted to admit because I had been involved in Holstein selection practices and in advising Holstein breeding programs for more than 20 years.
We hope that you and many others will find this site very useful. By the way, you can contact me at grogers200@yahoo.com and I will try to help you get some Norwegian Red (NR) semen if you want to give NR a try. You can also contact me at 865-680-4208 (my cell) if you want to talk about crossbreeding and my thoughts in general. I do recognize that the traditional breeding companies are only gradually stepping up to the plate when it comes to serving the needs of producers who want to crossbreed. However, it takes time for changes like this to be accepted by many of us who are resistant to change by our very nature. So be patient (to a point) with your semen reps whether they work for Select Sires, Genex, Semex or whoever, but also be firm in communicating your wishes.
Best of luck with your herd and breeding program.
Gary, can you tell me what the Norwegian Red consists of breedwise? I’m certain there is Holstein in the mix. I’m unsure of where the polled genes come from. The Swedish Red is primarily Ayrshire with some Milking Shorthorn/Native Swedish cattle. The Red Danes are native Danish cattle with Swedish, Norwegian, Holstein, and Brown Swiss in the mix. I really don’t like the 3 breeds listed as the Scandinavian Reds. Creative Genetics shows data that the Norwegian Reds milk less than the Swedish Reds, however, I don’t see any difference with our crosses.
The problem I have with crossing is the two plus system or back crossing. I initially started out with Brown Swiss on our Holsteins and I used the parent breeds with mixed results. This is what lead me to use the other breeds. I’ve had 3 way crosses milking for quite awhile with favorable results.
I would also like to ask what others are looking for in the alternate breeds. My primary goal is to maintain type and calving ease. I’m very happy with the calving ability with our crosses.
I’m also not the biggest fan of back crossing but am doing a little experimenting on a few of mine by back crossing in the F2 generation and introducing the third breed as a mate to the F2’s.
For example, I’d breed a Holstein-Jersey back to either Holstein or Jersey (I’m doing it both ways) and then I breed the resulting offspring to one of the Scandinavian Red breeds.
As for what I look for in alternate breeds, I guess it boils down to what I’m looking for in a cow. A productive, healthy, and fertile cow. We always say that some of the best cows in our herd are those that you don’t really notice until they show up in the “old cow” pen. They may not be the top producer, but they are not on the bottom.
cowman1970:
Sorry for my delay in responding. You have posed an excellent question as to the background of the modern Norwegian Red breed. Also, you are correct that most North American dairy producers are doing 3 (or more breeds) in a rotational crossing program. Many of the large producers that I am now working with routinely are using Holstein, Jersey and Norwegian Red (and some Swedish Red as well). A few are using Brown Swiss (BS) rather than Jersey when either a producer does not like the Jersey crosses or the Jersey crosses do not work well in the facilities. The data thus far indicate that Brown Swiss crosses produce more milk than Montbeliarde crosses in the US and Brown Swiss by Holstein crosses are similar to Montbeliarde by Holstein crosses for most other traits (all these crosses will be better than pure Holsteins for reproduction). Purbred Brown Swiss calves can be a problem to raise but this seems to be much less of a problem in BS cross calves. One thing for sure is that under most herd circumstances the Jersey crosses are profitable when you properly consider income and costs. I work with a lot of farms and use a fairly detailed spreadsheet to evaluate the best crosses for the local farm circumstance and the NR and Jersey crosses are always the most profitable. In fact, the 3-way cross of NR sired cows out of a Jersey by Holstein dam is a huge moneymaker on most farms and based on what I know at this moment, if I could pick any breed combination for my herd, I would choose to have all NR sired cows from Jersey by Holstein dams. Of course this is hard to create (all 3-way crosses) in a dynamic situation, but you probably get the point.
Now to your main question about modern Norwegian Reds (NR). Modern Norwegian Reds originated from the fusion of 7 breeds in the 1950s (about 500,000 cows combined into 1 breeding program). The 7 breeds include 5 local dairy breeds in Norway that are not closely related to any other modern dairy breeds. I can provide the names of these 5 local Norwegian breeds if you want them, but I doubt that it would help you much as I have only seen a few of these local Norwegian breeds that can occasionally be found in Norway in a realtively pure state. The 2 additional (7 total -5 local breeds =2) breeds that make up the modern NR that you can recognize are the Red Poll and what was originally called Norwegian Red. The modern Norwegian Red takes its name from the old Norwegian Red and this old Norwegian Red was Ayrshire and Swedish Red based. There may have also been some Milking Shorthorn influence as there was in the Swedish Red. So basically the old Norwegian Red breed was Ayrshire/Northern Europe Red based. It is probably safe to say that Ayrshire/Swedish Red and Red Poll has the most influence on modern NR and Red Poll is likely the major contributor of the polled gene. However, one of the original local breeds (1 of the 5) was polled as well so some of the polled genes could have come from this breed.
You make a comment about Holstein influence on the modern NR breed. It is true that Norway imported some North American Holstein bulls in the 1970s and used them in the population. Norway also used some Swedish Friesian (old Black and White cattle – Swedes called them Swedish Lowland cattle) semen during this same time period. The North American Holstein influence in the modern NR breed is very limited. One of the geneticists from Norway recently did some work to quantify the influence of the North American Holstein and the Swedish Friesian on modern NR. I have a list of all recent NR bulls that are of interest to us and that went through the progeny testing program in Norway. Most of the modern NR bulls have between 0% and 4% North American Holstein genes. Raastad has over 7% North American Holstein genes and he has the most North American Holstein influnce of any current bulls. Most of the other current bulls have from 0% to 3% North American Holstein genes. Important NR bulls in the past may have had up to 10% North American Holstein genes but the contribution of North American Holsteins to NR is waining. The influence of the Swedish Friesian breed is actually larger in the modern NR bulls and the current NR population than North American Holsteins. Most modern NR bulls have from 5% to as much as 20% Swedish Friesian (Swedish Lowland) genes. It should be pointed out that the Swedish Friesian genes have little relationship to modern Holsteins and these Swedish Friesians may be no more closely related to modern Holsteins than Ayrshires are to Holsteins. Heterosis from mating North American Holsteins to Dutch Friesians, British Friesians, etc. is likely at least 1/2 the heterosis that we see when we have modern Holstein by Ayrshire/Red crosses so I would not get too concerned over the influence of the Swedish Friesian breed.
Over time the NR breed will continue to reduce the influence of North American Holsteins but the influence is extremely low now. Getting the influence to 0 is not a huge priority because the influece is so low at the present time. Over time I also expect to see the influence of the Swedish Friesian breed to decline. Also keep in mind that the idea of crossbreeding is not to maximize heterosis but to maximize the overall economic performance of the resulting crosses.
Keep in mind that the Finns, Swedes and Norwegians have shared bull sires in their Red breeds through the years so there is some influence of each of these populations on the other populations. Clearly each of these populations have shared some genes and each has likely benefitted from the other population. Basically this means that if one of these populations has a low percentage of genes from some other breed, then all the populations likely have a little influence from that breed as well. Overall, I can say that the influence of Brown Swiss or Fleckvieh types on NR is essentially 0. The influence of Jersey on NR is also essentially 0. It is hard to tell if some local breeds in Finland or Sweden have had much influence on NR. NR has used som Finnish and Swedish bulls but most of these bulls were primarily Ayrshire types. Sweden and Finalnd has used NR bulls through the years so if NR has some genes from a local breed then Finnish Reds and Swedish Reds also will have some influence from these breeds.
I hope this helps with the understanding of the NR breed and breed crossing.
Here is a link to an interesting website that I have been viewing off and on the last few years.
http://neurocad.lva.lt/Breeds/Breeds2.htm
In my area of central Pennsylvania, the Lineback has become a popular breed. It is interesting to see how many off these breeds bear the same resemblance.