Bull ‘teams’ - Risk vs. Reward
The ‘bull team’ approach to herd improvement has long been a mainstay of our industry. It’s operationally easy for the AB Co’s to deliver at scale and pace, but it’s not without risk. The simplicity of the teams approach is what draws many farmers to it – someone else has done the thinking, and it’s based on a high-trust model whereby farmers’ trust that the right bulls have been selected for inclusion in the team.
However, herd improvement in key traits like udders (which are set to become increasingly important as we ask fewer cows to produce more milk as we head down the efficiency path) are slow at best. Using a ‘bull team’ approach that you have no input into selecting the bulls who are going to be used on your cows, you can expect very little improvement in some key traits – like Udder Overall. The herds we’ve examined this year show the same consistent pattern – Udder Overall sits slightly higher than breed average because there has not been a deliberate focus on this trait, and because the minimum standard for Udder Overall in most ‘bull teams’ is too low to effect any significant improvement.
For example – Mum is a XB cow with an Udder Overall BV of 0.3 (breed average). Dad is in a ‘bull team’ and has an Udder Overall of 0.5 (above breed average, but representative of the overall team average). Mum’s BV plus Dad’s BV divided by 2 (50% of the genes come from Mum and the other 50% come from Dad) will give us the probable Udder Overall BV of the offspring. 0.3 + 0.5 / 2 = 0.4. Remembering that the breed average for XB cows is 0.3, this is why improvement in key TOP traits like udder is so slow. Granted, there will also be some bulls in that team who will have great udder BV’s of closer to 0.8 or 0.9. If that bull comes up on the day when your 0.3 BV cow is on heat, then you’ve struck the jackpot. However, it doesn’t work like that when you’re using a bull ‘team’ – you get who you get on the day, end of story.
This approach is akin to letting someone else drive the Ferrari you’ve paid for. You’ve forked out the dough for this amazing machine, yet you’re relying on its driver to return it to you in one piece!
One of the biggest shifts I have seen in our Wingman farmers’ this season has been their understanding of the power that comes with selecting their own bulls with the traits they want to improve. Traits that are relevant to that farm, that farm system, and that farmer’s perception of their ‘Ideal Cow’.
Almost to a farmer, they asked us to help them improve the udders of their next generation of replacements. We’ve achieved that by selecting a team of bulls ourselves, placing heavy emphasis on the udder traits of the bulls in our team. For these farmers, an udder overall of less than 0.6 just won’t cut the mustard. Not if we’re asking fewer cows to produce more milk. In effect, we’ve selected a bull team based on a MINIMUM standard for traits that are important to us and will deliver us the progeny we want. Because our MINIMUM value for udder traits is significantly higher than the ‘bull team’ average for those same traits, we can expect good improvement in the next generation of offspring.
Back to our Ferarri analogy - do you want to be the one driving it or are you happy to let someone else take the wheel? Do you want to own your herd improvement strategy and change its direction or are you happy with the status quo? Risk vs. reward. Makes you think doesn’t it?
