A N A LY S I S
Unique survey of high lifetime pro text by Bert Wesseldijk
Despite a lack of official international statistics, the Netherlands can be said beyond doubt to be among the leading European Holstein countries in terms of high lifetime production. 1,970 new ‘hundred tonne cows’ in the past year have taken the all-time total to a striking 24,711. At the same time, the number of cows producing 10,000 kg of fat and protein rose by 211 to 1,925. HI Plus investigated these impressive figures further and looked at the most commonly used sires and the farms supplying the largest numbers of top-yielding cows.
Strikingly, the top ten farms in Table 1, taken together, account for 344 hundred tonners, which equates to 1.4% of the total number in the whole country! Unsurprisingly, the table includes a relatively high proportion of large herds. Three have over 400 cows (Hol-Stiens, Van Wijk and Boonstra) and one has over 1,500 (Vreba). In theory, it is easier for larger farms like these to produce more cows with high lifetime production. This makes the performance of farms 1 and 2 in the table (Knoef and Van Velzen), with 109 and 96 completed lists respectively in the past year, all the more impressive.
Proud leader
In the past year, Eastland Cash had the most daughters with 10,000 kg of fat and protein to his name. On the honours list of bulls siring the most hundred-tonners, he ranks third behind his sire Sunny Boy and good old Tops.
T
he figures are undoubtedly impressive: 24,711 Dutch cows had passed the production threshold of 100,000 kg of milk by 31 August 2013, and 1,925 had given over 10,000 kg of fat and protein. What was a rare event twenty years ago (especially the production of 10,000 kg of fat and protein) has long since ceased to be unusual. However, these remain excellent performance levels that merit close attention.
Large herds In this article we take a closer look at the figures for the thousands of hundred tonners that have been celebrated in recent years. For example, we identify the owners who have produced the largest numbers. There are currently 15,300 dairy farms in the Netherlands. Given the total of 24,711 Dutch hundred tonners, this should work out at an average of 1.6 per farm. Of course, this is not the situation in practice. The bulk of Dutch farms have not been graced by a single hundred tonner to date, while others seem to be collecting them. Table 1 lists the top 10 farms with the largest-ever numbers of hundred tonners (minimum 26). Table 2 lists the farms with the largest numbers of cows producing 10,000 kg of fat and protein (minimum 6).
When talking about cows with high lifetime production in the Netherlands, the name of Jos Knoef (Big Holsteins) quickly crops up. And no wonder because this farmer, with his family-run herd of over a hundred cows in Geesteren, is the proud leader of both farm tables. To date, Knoef’s herd has celebrated 54 hundred tonners and 20 cows with 10,000 kg of fat and protein. Seven of its hundred tonners are still alive, and that number is set to rise shortly. Knoef reports a Laurenzo daughter with 99,000 kg and several other cows standing at over 90,000 kg. He expects Laurenzo to be one of the next bulls to feature in the league table of sires with high-yielding daughters. “Our 54th hundred tonner was a Laurenzo, and we have other good old cows by him. The high lifetime production was already there on the sire’s side. His own sire Cash and grandsire Sunny Boy produced plenty of hundred-tonne daughters of their own. And in Laurenzo you have a Cash son with a good breeding value for udder health,” says Knoef, who aims to breed for high lifetime production. “We want cows with as few problems as possible. There is no such thing as problem-free when working with livestock, but we do aim to minimise problems. We try to avoid mastitis and cell count problems in particular.” To achieve this, Knoef is consistent in his choice of bulls. “Yield, udder and legs have always been important traits. And they still are, although the emphasis has perhaps shifted slightly away from udders and more towards legs,” says Knoef, who adds that udder health is now an important extra selection tool as well. As are the breeding values of late maturing and persistency. “Late maturing should not be an excuse for low heifer yields, but we don’t like to use bulls with a negative breeding value for this trait. For that reason we steer clear of bulls such as Bolton, with a score of 87 for late maturing.”