bulls-weight-jerseys-26.html
VikingNews UK 02 2017
27 / 28
27 june 2017 | vikingnews news from
vikingred
the demand of semen of
polled
sires
has made us put more emphasis on finding good
polled
animals into the vr breeding scheme. by auli himanen, breed coordinator
vikingred
, vikinggenetics increased interest in
polled
genetics in
vikingred
breeding scheme health traits, a seal of quality for
vikingred
w hen looking at the bull?s evaluation data, it is not always easy to notice what is behind the scenes. but it is a fact when looking at pheno- typic averages for
vikingred
bulls that they are quite a bit lower in almost all health traits compared to other breeds, meaning fewer health problems. this is very fa- vorable to farmers having pure red cattle but also for the ones using the procross concept. w e have systematically genomically tested heifers and cows who have a
polled
sire in their pedigree or if the female is known to be
polled
. the females with the highest genomic values within the sire group have been tested for
polled
genes to ensure if they are a carrier and then they have been either purchased to vg facilities or made flush contracts to be flushed at home. the goal is to mate them with
polled
sires
if possible. lately the
polled
sires
have come mainly from nora präst- gård or andersta families. the most used bull has been vr hel p gntm +18, available also as x-vik. also vr nail p gntm +17 and vr fonda p gntm +13 have been popular as well. now we have three new
sires
coming into semen produc- tion, one of them being homozygous
polled
. the homozygous bull is out of hel p with valpas as mgs with still an unoffi- cial breeding value. the others are heterozygous; vr luke gntm +23 (vr lucky x nora prästgård) and vr hjusticia x vr gamst still with unofficial breeding value. we are also aiming at testing several
polled
nrf (norwe- gian red)
sires
in our reference group to see if there are any candidates high enough to be used as
sires
of sons in the vi- kingred breeding scheme.
vikingred
. table 1. average vr sire compared to other breeds frequency of diseases average vr sire with index 100 average vh sire with index 100 mastitis frequency % 8.2 12.8 reproduction disease frequency % 2.6 7.0 metabolic disease frequency % 3.1 4.9 feet & leg disease frequency % 4.4 16.3 the gain in genetic progress per year has been for hoof health and fertility about 0.7 index units/year, for mastitis 0.6 units and in general health 0.4 units. the progress in longevity has been the highest with 2.0 index units/year at the same time ntm (nordic total merit) has developed +3,0 ntm-units/year. 27 june 2017 | vikingnews source: nav
breeding-vikinggenetics-future-28.html