Posts Tagged Better Life Efficiency

CRV Health and Efficiency in breeding bring visible results

Posted by in category Efficiency, Health

Ask any dairy farmer, anywhere in the world, to describe their breeding goals and irrespective of the breed of cattle, the answers will be very similar. The nuances of their breeding strategy and choices differ marginally, determined by the local market and the production conditions. But high on every farmer’s wish list is a cow that produces effortlessly and converts feed efficiently into milk.

Numerous breeding values have been developed in recent years to facilitate a targeted breeding strategy that accommodates a range of traits. CRV clearly summarises all these breeding …

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De Rith Nora 265 produces 200,000 kg of milk

Posted by in category Efficiency

De Rith Nora 265 smashed the barrier of 200,000 kg of milk today. The Addison daughter, who is owned by Adrion and Lisette van Beek from Breda, is the fourth cow in the Netherlands to achieve this amazing milestone.
Nora is much cleverer than her herd mates
Nora will be 19 years old this month. She has clocked up 12 milk yield records and took a total of 5457 days to reach the magic figure of 200,000 kg of milk. Nora was bred by Jos Peeters, Lisette van Beek’s father. She has spent her entire life at the De Rith dairy farm. Measuring just 143 cm in height, she is now the small…

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Dairy farmer Willem Alders about feed costs

‘Difference in feed conversion financially interesting’

Posted by in category better life, Efficiency

The income over feed costs is a key financial factor for Willem Alders. Feed intake data really opened his eyes to the individual differences between cows. ‘The poorest performing animals add little or nothing to the total income over feed costs. However, the best performing animals contribute more to the profit than expected’, he states.

Willem Alders had expected there would be differences, but such a large variation in feed conversion rates between individual cows came as a big surprise to the dairy farmer. The Alders family from Overloon started registering the feed intak…

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Breeding for feed efficiency gives economical cows

Posted by in category Article, Efficiency, Genetics, Index run

‘How efficiently a cow converts feed into milk is a key economic figure on a farm’, believes dairy farmer Jan Nieuwenhuizen. He has always been convinced that feed efficiency is hereditary. But until recently he had to estimate how well bulls would pass on this trait himself.

‘How is it possible that the daughters of one bull produce 10 kilos of milk more on the same feed ration than daughters sired by another bull?’ A question Jan Nieuwenhuizen has asked himself many times during his career in dairy farming. ‘Feed efficiency, the number of kilos of milk a cow produces using …

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Save on feed not used for milk production

Posted by in category Article, better life, Efficiency

Thanks to a database of 4350 cows, more – and more reliable – breeding values for feed efficiency can be calculated. As from April the breeding value for ‘saved feed costs for maintenance’ (SFCM) will be included in the  NVI formula. The biased belief that breeding for efficiency results in smaller cows can be banished to the realm of fables.

>>Read the original article here<<

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