World Dairy Expo Week: Five Holstein Bulls That Drove Me to Crossbreeding

 

 

(note: this is the first in what I’ll try to make a few posts during World Dairy Expo Week. After Expo Week, we plan on having a Polled Week with possibly some guest posts)

Time for a bit of a reflective post.  When I began crossbreeding, it wasn’t just an exercise for fun.  I was genuinely searching for a more robust and profitable animal.  With that in mind, let’s look at the Holstein bulls that were popping up as sires of cows that drove me to begin this thought process that the cow world is not all black and white.  Before I go on a critical look at some well known bulls, let it be known that this is not a dig at the people that bred these bulls and not a jab at the companies that marketed them.  You’ll see mostly Select Sires bulls on here, which is a function of being a heavy user of Select Sires at the time.  Consequently, using a lot of Select Sires also introduced us to Swedish Red and Montbeliarde.  So this isn’t meant to be critical of any people or organizations.  Just a perspective of where I feel things went wrong for my herd’s genetics.

1.  MARA-THON BW MARSHALL-ET – First on my list is good old BW Marshall.  Nobody will criticize the milking ability of his daughters.  They just flat out milked from the day they entered the milking herd.  Almost as though a sprinter was trying to run a marathon that is a cow’s life, they ran out of gas at an early age for the most part.  This is confirmed by his productive life score of -2.0.  Fertility was also a problem.  His daughters were some of my worst to get bred.  Another trait where BW Marshall was poor in was….. no, let’s save that for his son who carried that bad trait on and then some.

2. SILDAHL AIRRAID – Daughter stillbirths! Airraid’s daughter still birth rate is 19.2%.  Birthing for the cow is a natural process that ought to have as little human intervention as possible.  It’s better for the cow, and it’s better for the people that don’t want to get phone calls at 1:00 AM that a cow is having trouble calving.  If a vet school class wanted to have a lab on calving difficulties, just have a bunch of Airraid daughters ready to calve at the same time.  I’ve seen it all with them.  Backwards, upside down, head and/or feet caught underneath, or like today’s example of completely normal presentation except dead.  And I’m fairly certain that these calving difficulties sink the bull in other areas.  Hard calvings tend to lead to a snowball effect of problems.  From metabolic problems after calving to reproductive problems down the road.  Nothing good comes from a stillbirth or hard calving.

BW Marshall may have his warts but he has some decent sons when crossed on healthier bloodlines.  BW Marshall on a Manfred dam should theoretically make a decent cross, but in this case the inheritance and amplification of BW Marshall’s daughter calving traits sink the bull.  On the bright side, this bull could have been worse.  He could have had Manfred’s type traits on top.  Though I did love my ugly Manfreds.

3. WIL-HART E LOUIE-ET – This bull probably holds my record for sudden deaths.  It was not at all unusual for Louie daughters to turn up in the morning dead in their freestall.  Another bull with a terrible productive life (-4.8), it makes one wonder what kind of genetic deficiencies this bull passed on.  Was it heart issues?  I never autopsied any of them.  Looking at their sire identification was enough of an explanation for me.

Louie’s name appearing in the pedigree of Macomber O-Man Bogart scared me off, but with Bogart’s second crop coming in and his health traits being much closer to O Man than Louie, I’m giving him a 10 unit whirl (on crossbreds of course).

4. HENKESEEN HILLCREST-ET –  Too big and infertile.  While they definitely had strength to back up their stature, the infertility (-3.2 DPR) of these cows was too much.  I think I’ve got one more of these running around as she seemed to always conceive on a last chance breeding.

5. REGANCREST ELTON DURHAM-ET – This selection is likely to ruffle a few Holstein breeder feathers.  I wouldn’t have included Durham when I actually started crossbreeding.  Looking back now, he makes this list for reasons I’m basically speculating on due to experiences I’ve had.  I was never turned off by the temperament of Durham daughters despite taking a few shots from them.  My problem is that I’ve dealt with some rear leg paralysis issues in cows over the past few years and every single one of those cows had Durham in the pedigree.  What starts as some cramps ends in paralysis of the read legs.  I’ve heard others talk about the ‘Durham Cramps’ but I don’t believe there is any proof of this being a genetic trait.  For a bull that is almost universally praised and considered a legend of the Holstein breed, I can’t help but wonder as my experience with this paralysis isn’t just one or two cows.   They are not necessarily Durham daughters, but all have Durham close in the pedigree.

So there you have five bulls that helped push me toward a crossbred herd.  I’m sure if I was doing my business with other companies at the time, this look may look different.  I never had the pleasure of using a bull like Stouder Morty for example.  The takeaway message here is that there are a few similar traits these bulls all share.  They are negative for productive life and daughter pregnancy rate (minus Durham on DPR).  Say what you will about health traits, my experience matches the numbers with these bulls.  So I turned elsewhere to find more health and vigor, especially when I was constantly told by certain segments of the breeding world that selecting for health traits was foolish.  And I haven’t looked back since.

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