Young Guernsey Bulls awaiting proofs in the UK- Jan 09
There are 18 Young Guernsey Bulls with daughters born in the UK that are awaiting their first proofs, the number of daughters listed are registered with EGCS and most of these bulls will have additional daughters in herds on Guernsey Island.
The advisors to the GGBP scheme would maintain that a minimum of 40 daughters from any one bull provided that they are in more than 10 herds will provide a stable proof. However the costs of collection for each of these bulls has risen by 50% in the 7 years since GGBP was relaunched and so as a rule of thumb it has been necessary to market around 600 straws of semen from each bull and that has normally been the amount imported from the young American bulls that have been added to the GGBP scheme. Experience suggests that approximately each 7 straws of semen sold results in a pedigree heifer registered with EGCS and usually we would expect between 80 and 100 predigree daughters.
Click on the bulls name to find the full pedigree and cow family details from CDI.
|
Name |
View Progeny |
Milk kgs |
Fat+Prot |
Fat% |
Prot% |
£PLI |
GMI |
|
324 |
21.6 |
-0.04 |
-0.05 |
60 |
165 |
||
|
Chiller * |
454 |
30.5 |
-0.06 |
-0.05 |
64 |
237 |
|
|
Loren ** |
317 |
21.3 |
-0.02 |
-0.05 |
|
178 |
|
|
325 |
29.7 |
0.05 |
0.01 |
65 |
253 |
||
|
149 |
23.7 |
0.18 |
0.05 |
57 |
246 |
||
|
Iceberg # |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
419 |
34.2 |
0.05 |
-0.04 |
106 |
310 |
||
|
279 |
28 |
0.09 |
0.02 |
105 |
185 |
||
|
374 |
31 |
0.07 |
-0.04 |
89 |
299 |
||
|
335 |
34.6 |
0.08 |
0.06 |
84 |
387 |
||
|
227 |
34.3 |
0.17 |
0.04 |
140 |
323 |
||
|
237 |
23.6 |
0.08 |
-0.01 |
98 |
207 |
||
|
58 |
25.1 |
0.29 |
0.10 |
108 |
226 |
||
|
397 |
36.2 |
0.07 |
0.01 |
117 |
254 |
||
|
254 |
24.1 |
0.06 |
0.01 |
72 |
160 |
||
|
328 |
33.8 |
0.09 |
0.04 |
121 |
333 |
||
|
500 |
40.7 |
0.07 |
-0.06 |
129 |
239 |
||
|
313 |
34.3 |
0.13 |
0.03 |
112 |
217 |
||
|
0 |
502 |
31.9 |
-0.09 |
-0.05 |
|
259 |
* Chillers figures are for his US Calved daughters
** Loren’s dam has incomplete PTA information and this has affected his figures and that of Ivor
# Iceberg has no calculation as his US Parent information is missing from the EGCS database.
The 3 Genus bulls, River, Junes Oak and Hercules will have had probably 2000 straws used.
There will be more daughters to come from Eros and Ivor whose semen was sold during 2008 but there does seem to be a trend towards fewer daughters from these young bulls. This concerns me as it suggests that these bulls are probably not earning enough to cover the costs of their collection.
The other marked difference is the change in balance between PLI and GMI.
PLI was remodelled by Dairy Co in 2007 to put more emphasis on “survival” traits and fertility and rewards depth of cow family information .
Five years ago Mike Cox made a proposal to the FOB Committee suggesting that more emphasis should be placed on the cow families, a man ahead of the times, and certainly a “lone” voice as the only dairy farmer on Alderney, but hardly in the wilderness as he is in the land of “milk and money”.