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VikingNews Global 1-2019
16 / 28
t oday, when genomic breeding values are equally accurate for both young bulls and young
heifers
, this offers dairy farmers, a great opportunity to se- lect the
best
heifers
in your herd to become the mothers of the next generation. if you decide to use the top one for et (
embryo
transfer), you will be at the cutting edge when it comes to utilising the
best
genetics that can really help you make progress in your herd that will pay for itself. as females normally only have one offspring a year, scope to contribute to the next generation is limited. by using et on
heifers
, you can have more of the
best
off- spring and increase the genetic level of the herd. flushing the
best
females in the herd and putting their
embryo
s in
heifers
with lower breeding values, means you increase genetic gain faster in your herd than by inseminating most of your cows and
heifers
. with genomic testing on
heifers
, we at vikinggenetics can make better decisions on which females to use more densely in the breeding programme. in 2018, 52% of the dams for the tested bull calves were genotyped and the by ann tidström, product manager
embryo
, vikinggenetics news from breeding genomic selection and
embryo
transfer, cutting edge technology m olvi (wilder) and vg online (vr folmer), are two of the
heifers
in our viking
embryo
programme in hollola, finland. corresponding figure for bought bulls was 92%. 20% of the tested bull calves were
embryo
calves and among the bought calves 55% were from
embryo
. this shows that using genomic selection on females gives you higher reli- able breeding values and a better chance of selling a calf. viking
embryo
vikinggenetics has two facilities where we flush the heif- ers we buy from danish, swedish and finnish dairy farm- ers. one is in denmark, where we keep our
heifers
at a private farm with extensive experience of
embryo
flush- ing. the other one is in hollola, finland, where the vi- kinggenetics
embryo
centre is located and where we have our specialist et team. the team works with both opu (ovum pick up) and normal flushing. they also en- gage in various research projects and right now we are working with genotyping at
embryo
level. vikinggenetics also enters into agreements for flushing on farms, if the farmer does not wish to sell their
best
heif- er. vikinggenetics plan to flush 720 females in 2019. 16 vikingnews | may 2019
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