On meeting up with Lyndon Cleggett in Vancouver, my second question was if he had any Mervyn daughters in milk (He did not), the first question was whether he was happy with the Boskenna June Royal Oak daughters whose semen he had managed to get imported into Australia after seeing Boskenna June in the UK at the 2004 WGCF Conference. He was milking about 10 of them and was generally pleased with them but had a concern about front teat placement (too wide, a problem for the breed in every country that I have visited).
Having checked into the Hotel in Quebec City, last evening I was forced to pay for Internet Access for the first time on this trip and am trying to get value for my $8 and so this morning was up early and had a look at the ADHIS site (the Australian database).
On there I found the following
Boskenna June Royal Oak Marglyn Action Mervyn
APR +134 APR +53
AS1 +101 ASI +37
Milk +506 kgs Milk +53 kgs
Fat +22 kgs Fat +8 kgs
Prot + 16 kgs Prot +6 kgs
Type +107 Type + 107
Mamm +100 Mamm + 106
Stature. 100 Stature 89
Muzzle 108 Pin Width 98
Pin Width 107 Fore Udder 106
Rear Udder height 109
Ligament 105
Teat Position 105
I only noted the main trait scores as I don’t have access to a printer but all the figures are available within ADHIS, which is accessible from the Web Links on this site. 100 is the breed average for each type trait in Australia and this suggests that Mervyn will improve udders on his UK daughters. June Oak looks as if he will do well for production in Australia as should be the case for the bull ranked second to Aaron the World No 1.
These figures are based on less than 10 dtrs for each bull but give an idea as to what is possible if we do cooperate.