Crunch time for dairy farmers approaches

Crunch-time for dairy farming, beyond 2009, is just around the corner "“ mating, or getting cows in calf reports LIC. The success of this determines the production and profitability of the farming business into the future. Farmers want bulls proven to have traits desirable within their herds such as production, fertility, management and type, and to increase genetic gain; a poor decision at mating time can, according to one New Zealand farmer, be catastrophic. Artificial insemination (AI) is, today, the choice of the majority of New Zealand dairy farmers because it enables farmers to get large numbers of cows in calf to bulls of high genetic merit and calve within a defined period of time. As farmer demand for AI has grown, artificial breeding (AB) companies have been offering an increasing smorgasbord of potential sires to farmers, however, bull selection criteria among AB companies differs as does the quality of the sire. Malcolm Piggott explains: "I need to know that my livelihood is protected, I want a proven high Breeding Worth (BW) sire, a skilled technician, a recording service and inbreeding protection. I also want to protect my cows against lethal genes such as CVM (complex vertebrae malformation). "Reliability was key to our decision making, we needed to know that the team of proven bulls are the reliable option and that our cows will get in calf, calve easily and go on to produce. He said breeding decisions must be based on long term performance and profitability as ultimately poor genetics could potentially prove very costly to his business." In the end, Malcolm Piggott says farmers have to decide whether their business, and their future, is worth a gamble - "I can't afford to go away from what's been proven to deliver profit."