Top Holsteins hard to beat when compared across breeds

With breeding choices complete in most autumn calving herds, attention is turning to herds calving next spring, who can look to the new Spring Calving Index (£SCI) ranking, published today by AHDB, to make their breeding choices, particularly if using mixed breeds.

Black and whites feature heavily in this across-breed ranking.

Despite the penalty they may incur for size and any inferiority in their milk quality compared with some other breeds, their high kg milk solids potential, alongside the improvements they have made in udder health and fertility, can be difficult for other breeds to match in an overall selection index when compared in a ranking across breeds.

As such, we see a leading Holstein sire, Bomaz Platt, taking the lead, thanks to outstanding milk solids production, superb improvements to daughter cell counts, and good daughter fertility, combining to earn him an SCI of £653.

Similar features see the dominance of the second and third placed bulls – notably including superb daughter fertility and mastitis resistance in second-placed Progenesis Wimbledon (SCI £644) and substantial reductions in cell counts from third placed Winstar Graziano (SCI £630).

Those who prefer to emphasise the Jersey in their tight block calving, grazing-based, spring calving herds, will find the high-flying VJ NR Hauggaard Nibali Nibiru also features in the top 10, with an SCI of £556.

This bull scores well for milk quality as well as health traits across the board, and is particularly bolstered by low maintenance costs, when compared with the bigger Holsteins.

Many more Jerseys feature in the top 25 £SCI rankings and throughout the extent of the list, which can be interrogated through the AHDB website, where any herd’s specific requirements can be used to re-rank the bulls.    

Marco Winters, Head of Animal Genetics, AHDB, urged producers to favour these indexes if they are calving in a block of up to 12 weeks – either grazing for £SCI or winter feeding for £ACI – particularly if they are using mixed breeds.

“Both £SCI and £ACI have been developed as across-breed indexes which allows producers to directly compare one breed with another, when specifically using these rankings.

“Although some farmers may have a preference for crossing one breed against another for a particular mating, they are advised to always compare the likely effects on herd performance from their particular chosen sires, in a manner which is impossible without such an across-breed list,” he says.

However, he warned producers not to compare the £SCI and £ACI lists with each other, or with £PLI or its components.

He said:

“Each of these indexes is calculated on its own genetic base, which means they must only be compared within their relevant group.”

No comparison

Block calving producers are reminded not to compare the component figures of the £SCI or £ACI with those used in the calculation of Profitable Lifetime Index as £PLI is calculated at a breed level, whereas the seasonal indexes are expressed across the breeds, and hence, use a different average.

Bomaz Bob 6207, third dam of Bomaz Platt