By Charlotte Gray, LIC Sire Analyst
With their 2017-born daughters now milking in the national herd and herd testing, it’s an exciting time for the bull breeders themselves, as well as the Genetics and Sire Selection teams at Newstead.
Just who comes out on top is always intriguing.
The Ranking of Active Sires list, following the 14 October NZAEL run, featured two 16-code Friesians in the Holstein-Friesian top 30, both of which are LIC graduates.
As more herd testing information flows in week-by-week, during this part of the season, we can expect to see continued shifts in how these bulls rank.
Most of LIC’s 16-codes have at least 40 daughters inspected to date, and as these numbers grow so too does our confidence in the breeding values (BVs) of their type traits.
It’s worth mentioning that just because a bull comes through as high on Breeding Worth (BW), it doesn’t automatically mean LIC will market them: There’s always high attention paid to conformation and udder traits.
Four of this season’s graduate-movers happen to be A2/A2 bulls:
- 116126 TRONNOCO GI SPIKE-ET S3F
- 116019 WERDERS DE OVERTIME S1F
- 116013 STOUPES BG TRIUMPHANT S1F, and;
- 116065 DICKSONS BG MANDATE S1F.
116126 SPIKE isn’t yet on the Ranking of Active Sires (RAS) list (his BW reliability has yet to hit the 75% threshold), but he’s currently LIC’s highest ranking Friesian 16-code at 177 BW.
From a superb Blitz cow who has exceptional production herself, Spike is passing all of this on himself with a total milksolids breeding value (BV) of 86kg – comprised of 42kg of fat and 44kg of protein, with moderate udder BVs.
While the capacity BV is sitting a tad negative right now, his dam’s last inspection saw her walk away with an overall dairy conformation score of 8 out of 9.
Spike and his 16-code maternal half brother are the only bulls in the system from this elite Tronocco cow - with 4 lactations under her belt she averages an outstanding 389 lactation worth!
It truly is great to have Spike making such an entrance – congratulations to Tony and Keri O’Connor, together with the Holstein Friesian Discovery Project, for producing yet another bull for LIC’s selection team to get behind.
116019 OVERTIME is already occupying a team placing at LIC, being a member of the Holstein-Friesian sexed team for 2019.
Overtime’s dam (by Illustrious) was rated in 2014 by breeders Thomas and Courtney Werder as the best heifer they were milking at that time.
This lasting impression is one that Overtime is now making himself, with an overall opinion BV of 0.71 – and he comes with solid conformation and udder traits as well as production.
Although he has 95 herd tested daughters accounted for, there are more to come forward with in excess of 1000 calvings already to his name through his use as a genomic sire.
Overtime’s maternal half-brother by Hothouse is following in the same hoof prints as his older brother by being marketed as a genomic sire in LIC’s Holstein-Friesian A2/A2 team.
116013 TRIUMPHANT is a Grandeur son out of an exceptional Mint-Edition cow. This girl (as well as the Applause dam behind her) are production machines! Both currently have a 450+ PW and an average LW in excess of 500 – outstanding!
Like the other Grandeur sons coming through, Triumphant's daughters are quite the lookers with Triumphant's udder and conformation BVs both in excess of 0.50.
Another bonus with this new graduate is that proofs suggest he’s one of the easier-calving Friesian options (much like his sire), with a calving difficulty BV of -0.7. This provides the potential for use over yearlings.
Well done to David Stoupe and Tracey Wallace for producing this young sire.
116065 MANDATE was one of LIC’s highest-use genomic sires in the breeding scheme, so the cooperative is rapt to see him come through with such excellent type traits.
His udder overall is currently sitting at 0.75 and dairy conformation at 0.40.
Like Triumphant, Mandate is another Grandeur son that is yearling-friendly, and the breeding team has been excited to follow his progress (with a number of maternal half-brothers in the pipeline).
Given Mandate’s widespread use as a genomic sire there are more than 250 herd tested daughters contributing to his proof, and in excess of 7000 Mandate-sired calves have hit the ground so far.
Murray and Julie Dickson should rightly be chuffed to have this bull, the first of the sons from their extreme BW/PW Pulse cow, to come through.
