The Top 20 Heifers from the Aug 09 Dairy Co Rankings
These 20 heifers all have a £PLI of more than +£120 which places in them in the top 5% of the breed genetically and the 19 that have been classified average 82.6 points which will be about 4 points better than the breed average. 12 of the heifers are appearing for the first time whilst the other 8 have all improved their figures since the April proof run.
The August 09 Guernsey Bull proofs were released by Dairy Co on the 23rd August 09 and show some encouraging figures for bulls selected for use in the Guernsey Global Breeding Plan(GGBP).
The top 2 bulls have again improved with more daughters and are now over 90% reliability in other words the proofs will not now change.
The English Guernsey Cattle Society have semen available from a mix of young bulls selected for use in the Guernsey Global Breeding Plan (GGBP) and also from some of the newly proven graduates of GGBP, most notably Tiresford Pedro Ranked No 3 in the Proven bull rankings
The idea for this series came from Mike Cox on Alderney, who asked me when visiting Guernsey herds to take pictures of the “oldest” cow in each herd, he coupled that request with the comment “she won’t be the biggest cow in the herd”
The Beechgroves herd in Buckinghamshire is one of the leading herds in the UK and also one of the least well known. It is owned by brothers Gideon and Daniel Lacey whose family have farmed the farm at Lane End High Wycombe for over 100 years, formerly as tenants but in the last 10 years as owner occupiers.
Number 4 in this Series is Clay Hill Alice. She was one of a number of in calf heifers bred in East Kent by the Solley’s. She was purchased by Phil and Poppet Foord for their Clay Hill herd and is now milking in her 7th lactation.
These 29 cows and heifers are taken from the April 2009 Dairy Co list of top cows and have a £PLI score of more than +£150.
The average for the 29 is as follows
Dairy Co released the revised proofs in early April 09 and there are 25 heifers listed in the Top 1000 with a GMI of +350, 6 of these were in the January list but their figures have all risen.
For the first time there are heifers with GMI’s of over +500 and heading the list is Brymor Peggy 24 whose GMI has risen by +65 to +554 GMI. This daughter of Helium is a granddaughter of Brymor Peggy 9 EX90 who was probably the best daughter of Sagittarius. Peggy 24 is the 4th generation of the cow family to be Good Plus or better.
The second heifer with a GMI of over +500 is Blacknor Margaret 160, a Tiresford Pedro daughter classified H86 and she was Heifer Champion at the Bath & West in 2008 and is the third generation VG, her GMI +541.
April 09 Guernsey Bull Proofs from Dairy Co were released on 7th April 2009.
The top 2 bulls have both improved their figures since the Jan 09 proof run and I have added both sets of figures to the tables included.
Number Three in this series is Tiresford Posie 2, she has recently been classified EX 93 and is now in her 6th lactation. She has done over 40 thousand Kgs Lifetime and has a index within the herd of 123.