Almost 10 years ago, Eamonn Fagan spoke at the Teagasc National Dairy
Conference about breeding and what he wanted the fledging EBI system to deliver for him.
At that time, Eamonn’s herd was Holstein Friesian, the EBI of the herd was €44 and he had empty rates in excess of 20% after five months of breeding.
Fast forward ten years and Eamonn’s herd EBI is €194 (top 5%), herd empty rate is about 10% a year after three months of breeding, calving interval is 369 days and the herd is producing 489kg of milk solids per cow per year.
Speaking at a farm walk organised by Teagasc and Dovea last Thursday, Eamonn said that over the last ten years his focus has been on crossbreeding with Norwegian Red and selecting the highest EBI sires available within the Holstein Friesian breed.
About 60% of the Fagan herd now has some Norwegian Red blood. Eamonn, whose farm overlooks Lough Ree in Glasson, Co Westmeath, says that the catalyst for change came when he participated in the Teagasc Norwegian Red trial back in 2004.
“I was at the stage where I was desperate for an improvement in fertility because it was costing me so much. I was after putting a big focus into grass, improving my own skills and doing a good job on getting the cows out early as I’ve a dry farm, but the problem was the cows just weren’t able to cope with this system and the result was high empty rates.” he said.
Norwegian Red
Why did he choose Norwegian Reds?
“One of the big attractions of the Norwegian Red was the good health and fertility traits and also the fact that I wasn’t going to lose size in the cows. I suppose getting involved in the trial was one of the main reasons – I probably wouldn’t have gone down the crossbreeding route as early as I did and even at that it took some reassurance from Frank Buckley that it was the right thing to do, but I’m glad now that I did.”
Last year, Eamonn fed just under a tonne of concentrate per cow but is on target this year to feed about 800kg per cow. The 64 hectare milking block is stocked at 2.94 cows/ha with 188 cows being milked this year.
Overall performance last year was 489kg of milk solids per cow, (6,174kg of milk at 4.38% fat and 3.54% protein). Out-blocks are used for heifer rearing and silage.
This year, 89% of the herd was submitted for AI in three weeks and 95% was submitted in six weeks. Eamonn expects empty rates to be in the region of 10% like in other years. He is vaccinating for IBR, lepto, salmonella and BVD.
Looking at the active bulls lists, only three Norwegian Reds are in the top 200 bulls on EBI. I asked Eamonn if he was losing out on EBI by choosing the Norwegian Reds.
“Yes, that’s probably a fair point. I could increase the EBI of my herd further if I only picked high-EBI genomic bulls but I’m taking a more rounded view. I believe there’s at least €100 of a gain from hybrid vigour and while that might not be reflected in my herd EBI, I believe I see it in the milk tank and in my pocket with reduced costs.
“The other thing is that the EBI of the crossbred cow rises over time as she gets older, because of the fact that she is surviving in the herd, so this is adding to the EBI but it takes longer.”
So what is the next step in Eamonn’s breeding policy? Two years ago, he started using some sexed semen Jersey sires on selected cows so he now has some three-way cross heifers that will be entering the herd next year. With mixed results on sexed semen and a lack of choice within the Jersey breed, he says he will probably continue to use the Norwegian Red and Holstein Friesian bulls as the main breeds for the next few years, by criss-crossing back and forth.
On the day of the walk, the cows were milking 21 litres at 4.4% fat and 3.6% protein on 2kg of meal. Last month, Eamonn got a milk price 6c/l above base price, because of high fat and protein components. Last year, his milk price was 4c/l above base. His profit monitor from 2014 showed costs of production of 22 c/l excluding cost of own labour, quota costs, and debt financing.
Frank Buckley from Moorepark spoke about the results of the Norwegian Red trial that Eamonn participated in. The study showed that over €100 per cow in extra profit would be obtained by having Norwegian Red crossbreds over pure Holstein Friesian of the same EBI. Most of this extra profit was coming from superior fertility performance with the crossbreds. Milk solids production was only slightly higher with the crossbreds.
Norwegian breeding
programme
At the farm walk, Liam Healy from Geno UK spoke about the Norwegian Red breeding programme in Norway, where 97% of the 240,000 cows are Norwegian Red. Geno is the farmer-owned co-op that manages the Norwegian Red breeding programme and the exportation of semen around the world.
The national herd in Norway has a calving interval of 376 days, average inseminations per pregnancy is 1.6 and average somatic cell count is 127,000. He says that the industry there has placed massive weighting on fertility and health traits and was the first country in the world to include fertility in its breeding index. Liam said that diseases such as IBR, BVD, and Johne’s have all been eradicated and farmers there use hardly any vaccines.
When selecting test bulls, Geno picks about 10,000 cows a year for a planned mating with a sire of their choosing. This produces about 4,000 bull calves which are then genotyped and only the best 500 of these are purchased by Geno. These bulls are then brought into the testing programme and are analysed for daily liveweight gain, temperament, semen quality, health and a range of other parameters. About 40% of the Norwegian Red bulls in Norway are young test bulls. Only proven bulls are exported by Geno.
This testing programme is different to that adopted by Ireland in that genomics has far less of a weighting in the selection of young bulls in Norway whereas the Irish industry has placed significantly more faith in genomics with only one daughter proven bull in the top 50 EBI on the active bull list.
The percentage of Norwegian Red semen used in Ireland remains low with only a couple of thousand Norwegian Red sired calves being registered each year. Looking at Eamonn’s herd and hearing Eamonn’s story it was hard to disagree with the suggestion that Irish farmers are missing a beat by not using more Norwegian Red.
High milk solids output and good fertility are the cornerstone to any successful system and Eamonn’s herd displayed both of these characteristics. The old arguments against crossbreeding, (reductions in calf and cull cow value) are null and void with Norwegian Reds as cow size changes very little. In fact, this is one of my criticisms of the breed – in my view, some Norwegian Reds are too big and I would question their long-term suitability to some intensive grazing systems, in the same way as I question large high EBI Holstein Friesian’s suitability to some intensive grazing systems.
But for the majority of farmers, the benefits that crossbreeding brings to fertility and consequently milk output make it a no brainer decision. OK, it can be argued that by continuing to use high EBI Holstein Friesian bulls the same improvements will be made but it will take much longer – crossbreeding offers a quicker fix to the costly problems.
Eamonn Fagan started crossbreeding with Norwegian Red in 2004.Herd fertility and milk solids production has increased.About 60% of his herd now has Norwegian Red blood in them.Crossbreeding with Norwegian Red offers a quick fix to fertility problems while retaining size within the herd.
Almost 10 years ago, Eamonn Fagan spoke at the Teagasc National Dairy
Conference about breeding and what he wanted the fledging EBI system to deliver for him.
At that time, Eamonn’s herd was Holstein Friesian, the EBI of the herd was €44 and he had empty rates in excess of 20% after five months of breeding.
Fast forward ten years and Eamonn’s herd EBI is €194 (top 5%), herd empty rate is about 10% a year after three months of breeding, calving interval is 369 days and the herd is producing 489kg of milk solids per cow per year.
Speaking at a farm walk organised by Teagasc and Dovea last Thursday, Eamonn said that over the last ten years his focus has been on crossbreeding with Norwegian Red and selecting the highest EBI sires available within the Holstein Friesian breed.
About 60% of the Fagan herd now has some Norwegian Red blood. Eamonn, whose farm overlooks Lough Ree in Glasson, Co Westmeath, says that the catalyst for change came when he participated in the Teagasc Norwegian Red trial back in 2004.
“I was at the stage where I was desperate for an improvement in fertility because it was costing me so much. I was after putting a big focus into grass, improving my own skills and doing a good job on getting the cows out early as I’ve a dry farm, but the problem was the cows just weren’t able to cope with this system and the result was high empty rates.” he said.
Norwegian Red
Why did he choose Norwegian Reds?
“One of the big attractions of the Norwegian Red was the good health and fertility traits and also the fact that I wasn’t going to lose size in the cows. I suppose getting involved in the trial was one of the main reasons – I probably wouldn’t have gone down the crossbreeding route as early as I did and even at that it took some reassurance from Frank Buckley that it was the right thing to do, but I’m glad now that I did.”
Last year, Eamonn fed just under a tonne of concentrate per cow but is on target this year to feed about 800kg per cow. The 64 hectare milking block is stocked at 2.94 cows/ha with 188 cows being milked this year.
Overall performance last year was 489kg of milk solids per cow, (6,174kg of milk at 4.38% fat and 3.54% protein). Out-blocks are used for heifer rearing and silage.
This year, 89% of the herd was submitted for AI in three weeks and 95% was submitted in six weeks. Eamonn expects empty rates to be in the region of 10% like in other years. He is vaccinating for IBR, lepto, salmonella and BVD.
Looking at the active bulls lists, only three Norwegian Reds are in the top 200 bulls on EBI. I asked Eamonn if he was losing out on EBI by choosing the Norwegian Reds.
“Yes, that’s probably a fair point. I could increase the EBI of my herd further if I only picked high-EBI genomic bulls but I’m taking a more rounded view. I believe there’s at least €100 of a gain from hybrid vigour and while that might not be reflected in my herd EBI, I believe I see it in the milk tank and in my pocket with reduced costs.
“The other thing is that the EBI of the crossbred cow rises over time as she gets older, because of the fact that she is surviving in the herd, so this is adding to the EBI but it takes longer.”
So what is the next step in Eamonn’s breeding policy? Two years ago, he started using some sexed semen Jersey sires on selected cows so he now has some three-way cross heifers that will be entering the herd next year. With mixed results on sexed semen and a lack of choice within the Jersey breed, he says he will probably continue to use the Norwegian Red and Holstein Friesian bulls as the main breeds for the next few years, by criss-crossing back and forth.
On the day of the walk, the cows were milking 21 litres at 4.4% fat and 3.6% protein on 2kg of meal. Last month, Eamonn got a milk price 6c/l above base price, because of high fat and protein components. Last year, his milk price was 4c/l above base. His profit monitor from 2014 showed costs of production of 22 c/l excluding cost of own labour, quota costs, and debt financing.
Frank Buckley from Moorepark spoke about the results of the Norwegian Red trial that Eamonn participated in. The study showed that over €100 per cow in extra profit would be obtained by having Norwegian Red crossbreds over pure Holstein Friesian of the same EBI. Most of this extra profit was coming from superior fertility performance with the crossbreds. Milk solids production was only slightly higher with the crossbreds.
Norwegian breeding
programme
At the farm walk, Liam Healy from Geno UK spoke about the Norwegian Red breeding programme in Norway, where 97% of the 240,000 cows are Norwegian Red. Geno is the farmer-owned co-op that manages the Norwegian Red breeding programme and the exportation of semen around the world.
The national herd in Norway has a calving interval of 376 days, average inseminations per pregnancy is 1.6 and average somatic cell count is 127,000. He says that the industry there has placed massive weighting on fertility and health traits and was the first country in the world to include fertility in its breeding index. Liam said that diseases such as IBR, BVD, and Johne’s have all been eradicated and farmers there use hardly any vaccines.
When selecting test bulls, Geno picks about 10,000 cows a year for a planned mating with a sire of their choosing. This produces about 4,000 bull calves which are then genotyped and only the best 500 of these are purchased by Geno. These bulls are then brought into the testing programme and are analysed for daily liveweight gain, temperament, semen quality, health and a range of other parameters. About 40% of the Norwegian Red bulls in Norway are young test bulls. Only proven bulls are exported by Geno.
This testing programme is different to that adopted by Ireland in that genomics has far less of a weighting in the selection of young bulls in Norway whereas the Irish industry has placed significantly more faith in genomics with only one daughter proven bull in the top 50 EBI on the active bull list.
The percentage of Norwegian Red semen used in Ireland remains low with only a couple of thousand Norwegian Red sired calves being registered each year. Looking at Eamonn’s herd and hearing Eamonn’s story it was hard to disagree with the suggestion that Irish farmers are missing a beat by not using more Norwegian Red.
High milk solids output and good fertility are the cornerstone to any successful system and Eamonn’s herd displayed both of these characteristics. The old arguments against crossbreeding, (reductions in calf and cull cow value) are null and void with Norwegian Reds as cow size changes very little. In fact, this is one of my criticisms of the breed – in my view, some Norwegian Reds are too big and I would question their long-term suitability to some intensive grazing systems, in the same way as I question large high EBI Holstein Friesian’s suitability to some intensive grazing systems.
But for the majority of farmers, the benefits that crossbreeding brings to fertility and consequently milk output make it a no brainer decision. OK, it can be argued that by continuing to use high EBI Holstein Friesian bulls the same improvements will be made but it will take much longer – crossbreeding offers a quicker fix to the costly problems.
Eamonn Fagan started crossbreeding with Norwegian Red in 2004.Herd fertility and milk solids production has increased.About 60% of his herd now has Norwegian Red blood in them.Crossbreeding with Norwegian Red offers a quick fix to fertility problems while retaining size within the herd. 
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