Holstein herd is reaping rewards from optimum use of genetics
Rewards Genomics The Strong Holstein With Herd Is 1% Fitzgerald Reaping Those Abbeyleix, In From His 85 Co His The Tim Among Most For Ebi In Top Is Laois Herd
Holstein breeder Tim Fitzgerald is among those reaping rewards from genomics.
His 85-strong herd, in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, is in the top 1% for EBI and manages an impressive 600kg of milk solids a year while yielding more than 10,000L on average.
His herd’s figures are so impressive that his purebred Holstein bulls have been repeatedly sought out by several livestock genetics providers, including Dovea, Cogent, Progressive Genetics, Eurogene and Genus ABS.
Notable examples include Ballymaddock Warrior (EBI €305) and Heywood (EBI $286), with Teidi expected to be another name to look out for.
Tim runs the 130-acre farm with his wife Jillian and daughter Roisin, who is doing her greencert and also working part-time on a local dairy farm.
An interest in livestock genetics must run in the blood as Roisin has also completed courses in artificial insemination and pregnancy scanning.
Tim says he always took an interest in breeding quality cows, but says the herd really catapulted forward around ten years ago, when he became one of the first in Ireland to genomically test every animal.
“When genotyping first came in, I signed up as soon as I could. Then it was costing around €50 an animal, but it was well worth it for everything we got back from it,” he said.
“I always had a real interest in breeding and in improving my herd. Before genotyping, a herd manager had to rely on the past performance of the dam and the bull proofs, which show the past performance of the bull’s progeny, to see how the next generation would perform.
“That was fine, but it’s very slow. You have to wait until the animals calve down. And it could be two or three years before you can see if it’s performing the way its parents have been.
“It allows me to shortcut that whole process when I am picking out animals. It has really been a fantastic job.
“It’s only a little bit of work that you have to do. You just put the sample into a bag and post it off and the sooner you do that, the sooner you get your results back.
“You can log in on your phone, enter the details and that stays there on the system until you get confirmation that it’s the proper dam and the proper sire. Then you get a text message to say you can go and register Number 55’s calf. Then all you do is select ‘yes’ to confirm it’s the correct parentage and that’s it.
“If it’s the wrong parentage, you can override that and put in the correct details.” Crucially, results are returned around within days of the sample being received.
“It’s a wealth of information,” Tim explains. “And it’s very useful to have. I know what the best of my calves are almost as soon as they are born. If I want higher protein, a bit more milk or calves better suited to beef, I can see that immediately.
Tim was involved in the genomics pilot programme. Today, however, the National Genotyping Programme means stockkeepers will only have to pay a very small proportion of the fee. However, the benefits are just as profound.
If anything, with the scheme now building on the benefits of previous generations of selective breeding, even more can be gained in terms of speeding up the movement towards desired traits.
An added benefit, and perhaps one that could give Irish produce an additional selling point internationally, is that genotyping also ensures the recorded ancestral lineage of animals is registered correctly, ensuring full DNA-backed traceability for the Irish cattle herd.
Looking to the future, he is focused on health traits.
“Fertility and health almost drive your milk solids, more than the milk values nowadays. If you have good fertility in your herd your are able to run a compact calving block, plus your cows are lasting longer in your herd so you are getting the benefit of that high performance for more lactations.”
The spring-calving herd block calves across a nine-week block with cows averaging above 600kg of milk solids a year.
His latest rolling figures showed milk constituents at 5.36% butterfat and protein content at 4.36% based on around a tonne of meal a year.
It has important implications for dairy farming’s green credentials too, with the results of a study on the farm’s methane emissions expected to show Tim’s cows are more efficient.
“I haven’t the full results yet, but in general, the initial results have shown that even though my cows are giving over 600kg of solids, the methane emissions were around the same as those at Moorepark, producing around 450kg,” he explained.
But Tim also strives for balance and says that he doesn’t solely pursue high milk performance figures at the expense of the resulting beef-cross calf.
“Ultimately, every animal that’s born on your farm has to be sold, and that’s fierce important. So, whether it’s a bull calf, in-calf heifer, maiden heifer… even a cull cow.” He believes it is possible to produce a cow which is both a high-performer in terms of her milk production but also produces strong beef calves.
To achieve this, he won’t use bulls which score more than -5 for beef.
“I think we can have both – but if you want to get there and you want to get there fast, you have to genotype your animals,” he said.
“When I’m selecting sires, there could be really good animals which score -10, 12 or 20 for beef, but I won’t go for anything with less than -5. It’s all about keeping the balance – keep away from the extremes.
“We make all our income from dairying, we have no choice but to get it right and when we have the tools like genomics there, we may as well use them.” Looking to the future for his herd, he says health traits are now piquing his interest.
“I feel like we have enough milk now in the system, so I don’t want to add any more milk. Number one at the moment would probably be health traits – just generally trying to improve the feet and legs, and cell count would be another important one,” he said.
