ntm-survival-weight-4.html
VikingNews UK 02 2016
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high
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? high milk production and less mastitis christian and asger ladefoged owns the i/s ladefoged farm in denmark in which they have 500 dairy cows. asger takes care of the cows and his father christian is in charge of the heifers at another farm. their breeding
goal is clear; they want a functional cow with good udder that works in one of the eight lely robots that they have in their property. the herd they are working with every day has to have high production and good temperament. the ladefoged farm produces 12,200 kg energy cor- rected milk (ecm) per cow and uses sand as a bedding material to make a good environmental for the cows. they prefer the cows not too big, to make them fit in both the barn and the robot. one breeding tool used by advisors in denmark is the ntm on herd level. ntm is a combined index of 13 differ- ent traits which all have an economic impact for the dairy farmer. the divi- sion of the herd into three categories with low, medium and high ntm makes it easy for asger and christian to see the differences. ?i have 100% confidence in my breeding advisor and he decides the mating plan?, says as- ger. the largest difference on the farm ladefoged i/s between the lowest ntm group
and the highest ntm group is on mastitis and production. there is a dif- ference of 8% on treated mastitis, with 13% in the group with low ntm and 5% in the group with high ntm. regarding production there is a big difference in second lactation where lowest third has a production of 11,624 kg milk compared to the highest third having 12,560 kg milk. a difference of 936 kg milk, as shown in table 1. ?you need to have the time if you are going to manage the whole strategy with breeding? says asger, which is a member of the board of representatives in both vikinggenetics and vikingden- mark, as he indicates that he has full confidence in the work that has been done so far from breeding advisors in vikingdenmark. produce bulls to vikinggenetics about 10% of all heifers in the herd have been genomically tested and the heifers they test are the ones with an in- teresting pedigree. it is mainly their breeding advisor, who selects which heifers to test. a few good bulls have come from this herd like vh lemek (+39), vh malcolm (+26) and vh brisco (+33) and it seems like the advisory ser- vices work. the nordic total merit (ntm) it´s a decisive tool in ladefogeds farm in norager, denmark, to optimize their whole business and have the best profit at the end. by nanna hammershöj, breeding advisor, vikingdenmark table 1. differences in production on ntm level in farm ladefoged i/s lowest ntm group highest ntm group difference average ntm +5 +18 +13 prod 1 st lactation 8972 kg 9268 kg +296 kg treated mastitis 1 st lactation 13% 5% -8% prod 2 nd lactation 11,624 kg 12,560 kg +936 kg treated mastitis 2 nd 18% 15% -3% asger ladefoged with one of his cows. 5 june 2016 | vikingnews
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